Sharing Sunday January 31, 2016

Thought I'd help you out with a few ideas to fill in your February. If you're school is like mine we have parent conferences this month. Eeek!  So I could use all the help I can get.

My school is also doing something a bit unique in 2016. In hopes of increasing our Social Studies and Science scores for the upcoming GMAS testing, we are dedicating our entire Friday schedules to those subjects. So my grade level got together and designed a  45 min content lesson for both subjects, and a 45 minute technology lesson for social studies, and a 45 minute science experiment. That way we only had to plan for one lesson. Great collabo!

I thought I would share my Economics idea with y'all this month. I am using this as a great way to review material we haven't discussed since the beginning of the year since most of the Fourth Grade standards revolve around those earlier topics. I created an interactive ppt with four slides for the students to manipulate and reveal answers as they go. There is a worksheet involved as well for them to write down their thoughts for each slide.

You can click on this image to be able to click on all of the links:

 

Here's the worksheet that goes with the Economics Understanding slideshow.

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Who can forget Valentine's Day? Here's some more fun for y'all

Just click on the image to see all the links

Head back to the Primary Peach for MORE February fun and freebies.

Wagons Ho! Oregon Trail

I'm so excited to have finished this newest TpT product. I had a ton of fun creating it because it brought me back to my childhood curled up on the couch with a good book. I used to love reading those Choose Your Own Adventure stories. I could spend hours flipping back and forth between the pages. If I made the wrong choice I could just go back to the last page and try again. Such fun getting lost in the stories where I was boss.

When I was trying to figure out how to approach my next product I thought it would be a perfect vehicle for such a try out. Why not combine history with a little interaction?

I found this site where it would help you format your Choose Your Own idea. inklestudios was easy to use but I definitely suggest walking through the tutorial first. That was a big help in figuring out how it all works. Once you are done you can have your book formatted for use with tablets and such and it was only $10.

I had to find some other stuff to go with this idea, so I put together some task cards and a daily writing project that followed the Choose Your Own story. There are Main Idea question cards and Cause and Effect cards that take situations from the story and ask you to answer questions about them.

The daily writing  project also takes events from the story. There are twelve stops along the way out west. You would provide each student with a little journal (paper folded and stapled) to use throughout the project. You share one slide on the powerpoint each day. There is a prompt for students to respond to. I've provided a rubric to go along with it. You can print out a copy for the students so they know how this project will be graded if you like.

So, if you have to teach Westward Expansion at all, may I proudly present

Wagons Ho! Complete Pack

American Revolution Hanger People

Last year when I was hunting around for ideas to improve my American Revolution folder, I found this great blog post from Teaching in Room 6 where she detailed tons of fun ideas to enhance her curriculum. One of the things that she talked about was creating a Hanger Person. Her students picked one of the famous names from the period of turmoil as those colonists broke free from that pesky King George III. They wrote a report about their person and then went a step further and created a little visual display of their person using a hanger as the body shape.

I printed off a bunch of biographies from Mr. Nussbaum's site on American Peoples. His site is AWESOME! Seriously, if you haven't been there, RUN. Tons of great ideas and free activities to help you out. He covers all of the topics, so check it out. I laid the choices out on the floor and let them pick someone they were interested in.

My students were told to really concentrate on the period of their person's life that covered the years of the Revolution. That way they could narrow down their topic. I gave them a graphic organizer to use to help organize their notes. I had this great sheet that helped them break down the introductory paragraph better. I will look tomorrow to see if I can find it. But it basically had them focusing on their hook and summarizing the rest of their paper without giving too much away.

After the writing was done, I let them at the hangers. I have a ton of scrapbook paper from my previous creative life that they can rifle through to make their people. The tricky part was trying to get the head to stay on the hooky part of the hanger. Since the shoulders went over the upper edges of the triangular shape, I had to take the tape dispenser away from them and show them how to fold over a piece of paper to glue down on the back of the head with the hanger sandwiched between.

I had to send a few back to the drawing board to make their people 'more authentic'. They were starting to look like just some random person. I had them think what they could add to their person to show who they were. That's when they came up with adding in the Declaration and a quill pen for Mr. Jefferson. One of my girls added a huge snowball for Crispus Attucks from the Boston Massacre. Much better!

The project came out great. I just wish my class could complete these things a little faster. They take a long time for everything. I'm hoping my lesson on Jon Scieska's Battle Bunny will really spark some engines to race tomorrow!

Here's a shot of a few of my hanger people:

Must Read Linky - Graphic Biographies

Our unit on the Native Americans is winding down and those shelter projects are starting to flood in, but my brain is already turning to the next unit.

EXPLORERS!!

This is such a fun topic to teach because I get to tell the kids how totally off the wall the explorers were. How frightfully wrong, and completely clueless they actually were. It makes my students laugh, but then realize that every great idea has to start somewhere.

We usually begin with the guy who started it all, Marco Polo. His journeys and tell-all book created the frenzy that was exploration. Without him, North American would be completely different today. Yes, there were already tons of people living here and the Ancient Siberians and even the Vikings had already stepped foot on the wild lands before this Italian ever was a thought in history. But it was Columbus that brought it to the attention of Europe and the race was on.

A huge part of me wishes that the Europeans had dealt with the native inhabitants of this new land in a much more diplomatic way. So many of the hurts of the young nation would have been healed before they even began, but I digress from my topic.

I am linking  up with those Collaboration Cuties for their Social Studies lesson idea post. Head on over and see a great book that I also just bought to use during my Native American Unit. If you Lived with the Hopi is a perfect resource to help you answer those tons of questions students will ask about this tribe living in the dry lands of Arizona. Check it out!

My choice of books is moving beyond the Native Americans and turning towards those explorers that had a desire to learn more about their planet. Christopher Columbus is so well known, but so much of his journey is shrouded in the past. My kids are shocked to learn that he it took six years to convince King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to fund his expedition. They also find it so intriguing that his crew wanted to throw him overboard and  head back home shortly before they sighted land.

My fourth graders, especially the boys, are in love with graphic novels. I am constantly seeing them check out Star Wars, Hardy Boys, and Baby Sitters club done up in this style. Even the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Tales of a Not-so are graphic novels of a sort. So, why not bring in some dealing with our history topics?

This is one of a series of books that cover the history of our nation. I love them because they have other titles that match our Fourth Grade curriculum perfectly - History of Jamestown, the Boston Tea Party, Sutter's Mill, etc. What's great about them is they don't sugarcoat anything. Kids can see that a lot of greed, ambition, and selfishness tied into exploration. Plus they definitely don't overly romanticize the first meeting between Europeans and natives of the Americas.

I am trying to get our librarian to order the set, or even get some money to buy six copies of some of them to store in our book room teachers use for small groups. We shall see!

Mentor Monday - Landform booklet

Something we do in Fourth Grade every year is sneak in a little geography. There are several terms that the students are responsible for knowing. But with all the other content we need to cover, it's hard to get this little unit in. We usually slide it into the other content areas. Take our unit on Native Americans, for example. We study the Inuit, Kwakiutl, Nez Perce, Hopi, Pawnee, and Seminole. As we are discussing each of these we can talk about the locations they chose to live and the landforms that surround that area.

I'll go through the Kwakiutl for you, since its such a fun word to say. They settled on the Pacific coast in the Washington - Oregon areas. I can cover oceans, continents, coast, gulf, and bay throughout my discussion of this tribe. When I mention one of the landforms I have them pull out this little booklet that we handed out at the beginning of the year. It's just 3 regular pieces of 8.5x11 paper that have been folded width-wise and stapled to form a book.

Each page can fit up to two different landform definitions and pictures. Since it's the beginning of the year I have printed out the text to glue down, but I want them to draw the pictures to get a clearer sense of what the landform shapes look like. I've had them copying from the board everything including the text, but they took 4-EVA to get it done. I want to see if this helps them get it done faster. Any extra text pieces they can slip into their binder baggie I talked about here.

When I need them busy for a bit while I conduct the reading records we are charged with every year, I will run all of the pictures they need to know into a powerpoint presentation that I have running on a loop with a slide separation of 7 minutes for now to see if this is enough time for them to draw and stay on task. That's 27 students that I need to sit and listen to read complete books while I take notes. So I need the others to stay busy with something. This is a great project for them to complete individually.

I have placed the ppt and the text printout into my TpT store for free. So make sure you take advantage of that. I'd LOVE it if you leave me a little comment there on how it works for you.

Have fun!

Mentor Text - Social Studies

Those two FAB ladies over at Collaboration Cuties Stacia and Amanda are at it again with their latest installment of mentor texts.

This week's theme is Social Studies! They offered up a great text to include in the study of Native American tribes which fourth grade does every year. I definitely added that to my Amazon cart. Oh, definitely go over and grab the freebie. It's too awesome when you are starting up interactive notebooks. It will help students get ready for working with longer texts more independently.

For my installment, I want to share a book I was introduced to least year during our study of the American Revolution. It's called The Scarlet Stocking Spy by Trinka Noble. It's an incredibly moving tale of a young girl who helps craft a code with her soldier brother to pass information around about British ships in the harbor.

Here's Amazon's write up:
Philadelphia 1777 is no place for the faint of heart. The rumble of war with the British grows louder each day, and spies for and against the Patriots are everywhere. No one is above suspicion. Still, everyday life must go on and young Maddy Rose must help her mother, especially since her father's death at the Battle of Princeton and now with her beloved brother Jonathan off with Washington's army. But when childhood games become life-and-death actions, Maddy Rose is drawn ever deeper into events that will explode beyond her imagining. As young America stands on the very brink of its fight for freedom, it becomes clear that even the smallest of citizens can play the largest of parts, and that the role of a patriot has nothing to do with age and everything to do with heart. In The Scarlet Stockings Spy, Trinka Hakes Noble melds a suspenseful tale of devotion, sacrifice, and patriotism with the stark realities of our country's birth.Noted picture book author and illustrator Trinka Hakes Noble has pursued the study of children's book writing and illustrating in New York City at Parsons School of Design, the New School University, Caldecott medalist Uri Shulevitz's Greenwich Village Workshop, and New York University. She has authored and illustrated numerous books including the popular Jimmy's Boa series, which has been translated into six languages. Trinka lives in Berrnardsville, New Jersey. The Scarlet Stockings Spy is her first book with Sleeping Bear Press. Because Robert Papp's childhood drawings of his favorite superheros were such a pleasure, it was only natural that he would wind up an illustrator. Nowadays, his award-winning artwork appears on book covers and in magazines instead of on the refrigerator. He has produced hundreds of cover illustrations for major publishers across the United States. Robert lives in historic Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

I must give you full warning to be prepared for the ending. I wasn't expecting it and was shocked into stopping for a bit to catch my wits.  Just make sure that you read it through for yourself first.