Native American Project

At the beginning of December we started working on a project where we were integrating Social Studies, Language Arts, and Technology.  In this project the students were asked to complete two tasks.  One was to write a compare and contrast essay and the other was to research two different Native American groups and take that information to create a iphoto slideshow presentation.  We have been working hard to complete these two tasks.  The students have been researching different Native American groups who once lived in Indiana.  They found their research in books, online, and even interviewed an expert.  We Skyped with Dr. Ben Kracht, a professor at Northeastern State University in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  He was very helpful in answering all of the questions that we had.

This week we will be finishing up our projects.  They have worked really hard on them.  Check out a few pictures of all of our hard work.  Not only did we learn a lot about the different Native American groups who once lived in Indiana but...we have also learned a lot about researching, using technology, working in a group, and presenting information.  Many of the 21st Century skills they will be using in the future!

 The students were working on their research any chance they got!  Even while the rest of the class was taking restroom breaks.  

We learned how to use the research tool in google docs to find information about the different Native American groups we were researching.  We then recorded our findings in a google docs document.  

Here is a picture of Dr. Ben Kracht and a member of the Kiowa Nation.  He has studied different Native American groups for over 20 years.  We were thankful that he was able to Skype with our class to answer all our questions.

Ask your child about their project...I am so proud of all of their hard work!

Reading Logs

Developing kids into lifelong readers has always been on my top ten list of teaching goals.  I strive to teach kids the skills they need to become stronger readers everyday.  So...I was looking into the research...and wondering..."How do I help my students become lifelong readers?"  Resoundingly, the research shows us that if we want our kids to be life long readers...they have to READ!  Not only do they need to just read a little bit...they need to read a lot!  They need to read at school and at home.  The more they read the stronger their reading strategies will become because we are giving them the opportunity to practice them.  They will develop even larger vocabularies which will help them to understand harder and harder texts.

So...as a class we are going to start collecting data on how much we read at home.  We will be using our monthly reading logs to track the number of minutes we have read for the month.  Our goal is to read 420 minutes in one month.  So check out our data...

 

 Each student randomly picked a secret number (that no one else knows) to be there number for the year.  Across the bottom are the students numbers.  The numbers going up the left side represents the number of minutes they have read.  The yellow line represents our goal of 420 minutes.  We are going to use a different colored dots for each month. Since we have done this for two months so far, each student has two dots on the chart.  This data will help us to see not only how each student is growing but also how are we doing as a whole class.  

As you look at our data you can see that some of us have met our goal and some have not.  Please encourage your child to read at home...and don't forget to mark it on their reading log!

Happy Reading!

Welcome!

My goal as a 4th grade teacher is to make sure that all of my students grow in their learning.  Everyday we do exciting activities to help us grow into lifelong readers and writers.  I am creating this blog as a means to keep you more informed about what we do.  I will be sharing information about upcoming projects, highlighting work that the kids have done, and sharing the skills we are working on. I will be updating this blog weekly to keep you informed.  As always...please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions or concerns.  So here goes...let the new adventure of blogging begin!

Extended Response Questions:

I am sending home the pre-test from our first extended response assessment.  You will be getting the rubric that I used to score the writing as well as the test that was given.  In an extended response assessment the students have to read a small passage and then answer a question about the text.  We are looking for many things when we look at these answers.  Did they write in a complete sentence, did they restate the question, did they use examples from the text to answer the question, etc...

Please remember that this was a pre-test!  I did not expect for any of them to have a perfect score.  This pre-test gives me good information to plan my instruction.  The areas that they did not score well in are areas that we will be practicing in class.  We will be taking a post-test in a few weeks.  Our goal of course is to see growth from the pre to the post assessment.

How-To Articles and Demonstrations:

Last week we finished up our How-To Articles as well as our in class demonstrations.  The kids all did an amazing job!  There publishing skills on the computers definitely went above and beyond what I thought they would do.  Today the kids will be bringing home the graded products so that you can take a look at what the accomplished.