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The Arts: Covered Wagons- Read Aloud and Hands-on Learning

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The Arts: Covered Wagons- Read Aloud and Hands-on Learning

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MLS.1.A.4 "Create light, medium, and dark values using pencil"
Students will read the nonfiction book, "Oregon Trail" by Mel Friedman to learn about the Oregon Trail and then create real life (small sized) covered wagons.

NCTE.2. "Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience."

MLS.I.3.C.4. "

Create an original artwork that communicates ideas about the following themes:

·   Missouri

·   The Environment

Time (e.g., past, present, future)"

Friedman, M. (2010). The Oregon trail. New York: Scholastic Library Publishing.

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We love fourth grade for many reasons, one of them being the kids get to study Idaho history and complete an Idaho history project. And so we approach our family's LAST Idaho history project with reluctance. After all, we have been encouraging these projects since our oldest was in fourth grade WAAAAY back in 1998.

Over the course of these many years, we have watched as, one by one,

our seven children took turns creating unique projects--

building Indian Villages out of Legos;

inscribing a map of the Oregon Trail on a piece of leather;

molding and painting the Idaho State Bluebird out of clay;

sewing and tying a quilt with wild animals native to Idaho;

researching our third great uncle who wrote, "Come, Come Ye Saints,"

creating a fossil bed showing how fossils, like the Idaho Hagerman Horse fossil, were found,

making a model of a pioneer covered wagon and showing wagon wheel ruts that still exist today.

Aubrey decided she wanted to make a covered wagon so she found what looked like a simple pattern...of course, looks can be deceiving...but with a bit of creative license, she came up with this for her project.

We think she did a great job!

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Fourth Grade Idaho History Project, take SEVEN

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We love fourth grade for many reasons, one of them being the kids get to study Idaho history and complete an Idaho history project. And so we approach our family's LAST Idaho history project with reluctance. After all, we have been encouraging these projects since our oldest was in fourth grade WAAAAY back in 1998.

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Students will ready "Everything on a Waffle" by Polly Horvath, and will then create their own poster to advertise the book while using details from the book to grab people's attention.

NCTE.12 "Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information)."

MLS.I.3.4. "Create an example of graphic art (e.g., poster, illustration, advertisement, greeting card)"

Horvath, Horvath, P., & McInerney, K. (2008). Everything on a waffle. New York: Random House Audio Publishing Group.

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The Arts: Autobiography and Self Portrait 

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The Arts: Autobiography and Self Portrait 

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Student will use writing skills to write an autobiography about themselves. They will then create, by drawing, a self portrait for the cover.

MLS.I.3.A.4. "Portrait:

Create facial features in correct proportion"

NCTE 3. "Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics)."

Weisinger, M., & profile, V. my complete. (2011, October 22). FLYING CRAYONS and other adventures in my elementary art room Retrieved from http://flying-crayons.blogspot.com/search/label/Self%20Portraits%20Andy%20Warhol%20Chuck%20Close%20Third%20Grade%20Fourth%20Grade

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Art Education: Grade 4 - Term 1: Family and Friends/Human figure in action/contrast/secondary colours/

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FLYING CRAYONS and other adventures in my elementary art room: Self Portraits Andy Warhol Chuck Close Third Grade Fourth Grade

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Students will use "Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan to research food labels, history of food and much more! This is a nonfiction reading and website for children to help them understand exactly how a food label relates to them personally and what they eat.

NHES Standard 2 | Students will analyze the influence of family, peers, culture, media, technology, and other factors on health behaviors.
Standard 3 | Students will demonstrate the ability to access valid information, products, and services to enhance health.

MLS.3.4.A.d. "a.   use organizational features of print and digital sources efficiently to locate  information"

Pollan, M. (2011). The omnivore’s dilemma: The search for a perfect meal in a fast-food world. London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.

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Using The Omnivore's Dilemma in the Classroom

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Use these classroom activities and discussion questions with the Young Readers Edition of The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. As a food detective, students will research the history, production, and labeling of food. They will think about food in the context of social studies, environmental science, and health and nutrition.

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Students play game(s) of their choice under Healthy Habits and will then have to make a brochure they would give to other students about making healthy choices.

NHES Standard 5 | "Students will demonstrate the ability to use decision-making skills to enhance health."

MLS.4.A.4.b. "explaining how various design techniques used in media influence the message"

Healthy habits games. Retrieved November 28, 2016, from http://pbskids.org/games/healthy-habits/

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Learn about healthy eating, exercise and play games with your favorite PBS KIDS characters like Daniel Tiger, Curious George, Arthur and Wild Kratts!

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Students will read the article "Favorite Foods" and then imagine eating only their favorite food for a week and what the experience would be like for them and how it would affect them. They will write about this imaginary experience.
NHES "Standard 5 | Students will demonstrate the ability to use decision-making skills to enhance health."

MLS.1.B.4.b.   establishing and supporting a main idea with an overall topic sentence at, or near, the beginning of the first paragraph."

Networks, S. (2000). Favorite foods. Retrieved November 28, 2016, from Printables, https://www.teachervision.com/tv/printables/tv00075s1-2.pdf

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Reading the nonfiction book "Westward Expansion" by Teresa Domnauer will build knowlege on the time period.They will then write journals as if they lived in the Pioneer days. They will be journal/diary style to show ability to write to a correct audience with a correct purpose. In addition to writing skills, students will show understanding of different time eras.
MLS.2.C.4.e. "
a.    use specific, relevant  and accurate words that are suited to the topic, audience, and purpose"

NCS.5.

INDIVIDUALS, GROUPS, AND INSTITUTIONS

Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of interactions among individuals, groups, and institutions.

Domnauer, T. (2010). Westward expansion. New York: Scholastic Library Publishing.

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If you are anything like me, you are always in search of ways to keep your writers writing. When I can integrate writing with another subject area, it is a win-win! During our study of pioneer and The Oregon Trail, pioneer journals are fun way for students to use their creative brains, practice their narrative writing, and share what they are learning with others!

Every year, the fourth graders at my school participate in an Oregon Trail simulation. Students are grouped in wagon trains groups, select a wagon master to lead them on their journey to Oregon, and buy supplies.

Wagon trains earn points which help them move along the trail. As they move across the Oregon Trail map, they learn about the landforms, native people, and the dangers pioneers faced as they made the treacherous journey.

One of the ways students document their trials and tribulations along the trail is by writing in their pioneer journals. This is a great way for students to practice narrative writing while learning about a history!

Before my students make their journals, we talk about how important the journals of the pioneers are to preserving history. Much of what we know about pioneer life and the trip west we know because of these primary documents. After that introduction, we get busy making our journals!

The materials you will need for making the journals are pretty easy to come by.

You will need a large paper bag for each student. I just had students bring them from home. You will also need yarn or twine, masking tape, a heavy duty hole punch. An electric hole punch would work the best, but I have a two hole punch at school that I used. It is heavy duty and works great! My three hole punch works well too. You'll see a picture of it a bit later. The one shown above DOES NOT work well. I'm not sure why I added it to the photo. :) For the journals you will also need either lined or unlined paper. I gave my students a choice. Each student will need 10 - 15 pages.

At some point, you will need your students' pioneer portraits. On the day my class was building their journals, we held our photo shoot. I photo edited (more on how to do this later in the post) and had the photos printed over the weekend so that we could finish our journals the next week.

The first thing your students will need to do is cut the bottom out of their bag. Using a good pair of scissors, model for them how to cut down one corner crease and then around the bottom section of the bag. When you are done, you will have one large section. If your bags have handles, they can be used for a latch which I'll explain later.

Now for the fun (and LOUD) part! In order to soften up the paper and make it easer to work with (and make it look and feel more like real rawhide) students will need to work their paper. This means they will need to crinkle it up and smooth it out over and over and over and over and over again! The more they work their paper, the more it breaks down the paper fibers and it gets softer and softer. This gets noisy! I suggest having students carefully roll it up and then step on it, putting as much weight as possible. They will need to be careful though. The paper will rip pretty easily.

Once students are happy with the feel of their paper (or when you can't take the noise anymore) have students carefully smooth out their paper as much as they can.

Now students can either measure how big their covers will need to be or, how we did it, eyeball it!

The paper should wrap around both the front and the back to make both covers. In the end, the cover should be be one continuous piece that just gets folded. This could be a great math lesson! Students will need to trip their paper so that it isn't too much bigger than the paper it will hold.

When the covers have been trimmed, you will now need to hole punch them. I suggest punching 4 - 5 holes.

This Swingline hole punch is adjustable with a little effort and I was able to punch 5 holes.

In class, we used yarn that I had on hand to bind our books. You could also use twine.

After journals are bound, have students title their journals. Each of my students have pioneer names to go with their pioneer identities. Students used Sharpie markers to write on their journals. The Sharpie bled through the covers, so next year, I'm going to have to remember to plan for that.

If you are adding Pioneer Portraits, each student will need to leave a large space in the middle of their journal for their picture.

As a fun added element, students could put "latches" on their journals. Some of our bags had handles and one of my students creatively came up with this ingenious way to keep her journal closed!

Using the handle pieces, she glued a small part in the front to make a loop. and a larger piece in the back that wrapped around the side of the book and tucked through the loop on the front.

I was pretty impressed! This may become a regular addition to the pioneer journals in the future!

Now that the journals are done, let's talk about the Pioneer Portraits!

This year, I tried something a little different for our journals. I included a Pioneer Portrait of each student. They turned out amazing and were very easy to do. All I used was my iPhone and a photo editing app called Snapseed.

On our journal making day, I asked all students to bring clothing and props that we could use as part of our photo shoot. Students brought hats, bonnets, vests, scarves, aprons, and more. I put up a brown piece of butcher paper on the wall and each student stood in front of it as I took their photograph. While I took the photographs, the rest of the students were working on their journals or getting dressed in their pioneer garb.

Once I had all of the photographs, and later that night, I sat down with my phone and worked on the photo editing. Like I said, this was my first time doing this and I am no photo editing expert! I'm going to share how I did it. If you know of tricks and tips that would make the process better, please share them in the comments. Actually, editing the photos wasn't painful at all. Once I figured out the filters I wanted to use, it was just a matter of repeating the steps over and over again 28 times.

The first thing I did was open up the app Snapseed on my iPhone.

I opened a photo of one of my students...

then I clicked on "FILTERS".

The first filter I chose was "BLACK & WHITE" and picked the "film" option. This gave the photo a bit of a grainy look to it.

The second filter I chose was "GRAINY FILM". This added a bit more graininess to the photo.

The third filter I used was "VINTAGE". This filter made the photo more brown, which is what I was wanting.

The next step was "LENS BLUR". This filter blurred out the edges of the photograph.

Finally, I opened the tools and chose "VIGNETTE".

This tool darkens the area around the subject of the photograph.

When it was all said and done, this is the beautiful photograph I ended up with. It makes my heart happy!

When I was done editing all of the photographs, I sent them to Costco for printing. They cost me about 17¢ each to print. Well worth it!

The next week, I had a wonderful parent volunteer cut ovals in the front covers of all of my journals.

We used this oval cutter by Fiskars, purchased specifically for this project!

Once the ovals were cut, the photos were added.

It was as simple as using masking tape and taping the portraits on the inside cover of each journal.

And here are the final results! They turned out great and the students love them.

I think this would be a great project for any history class. Almost any time period would make great material for a personal journal! I can imagine Civil War and Revolutionary War diaries, Lewis and Clark journals, Civil Rights diaries (just to name a few)!

Since the events and language need to be historically accurate in the writing, journals and diaries written from the perspective of a historical figure or an imaginary person during an important time in history is a meaningful way for students to construct a deeper understanding of the past and share that understanding with others.

If you are interested in more things "Pioneer", click HERE for my post on our annual Pioneer Day! It's a day full of pioneer activities, crafts, food, and fun!

Thank you for visiting Literacy Loves Company! If you have any questions about the project or ideas that would enhance it, please share in the comment section! I'd love to hear from you.

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If you are anything like me, you are always in search of ways to keep your writers writing. When I can integrate writing with another subject area, it is a win-win! During our study of pioneer and The Oregon Trail, pioneer journals are fun way for students to use their creative brains, practice their narrative writing, and share what they are learning with others!

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Students will complete activity sheets about executive, legislative, and judicial branches. They will compare and contrast as well as write about how they can be good citizens.

NCS.6. POWER, AUTHORITY, AND GOVERNANCE

Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of how people create, interact with, and change structures of power, authority, and governance.

MLS.3.4.A.f. "Determine the accuracy of the information gathered."

Government.pdf. Retrieved November 24, 2016, from https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0_vpTYVq8ELd2NMdXF4QWlyaFk/view

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Social Studies: United States-Direct Instruction

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Social Studies: United States-Direct Instruction

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Students will follow direction to color the matching state. This will require knowledge of north, west, south, etc. After completing this map they will keep it as a reference while reading the fiction story, "Bud, Not Buddy" by Christopher Paul Curtis.While reading the students will have to mark all of the states that Bud visits while searching for dad.

MLS.1.B.4.f. "using conversational, general academic, and domain-specific words and phrases"

NCS.1.Culture: "Social studies programs should include experiences that provide for the study of culture and cultural diversity."

Curtis, C. P. (2004). Bud, not buddy. New York: Random House Children’s Books

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Map of the United States- answer the questions.  This November NO PREP Packet for 3rd Grade is FILLED with hands-on, engaging and FUN resources that cover core skills for 3rd Grade!

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Students will work through modules to learn about circuits and play games along the way to incorporate learning standards.

MLS.2.F.a. "Identify the evidence of energy transformations (temperature change, light, sound, motion, and magnetic effects) that occur in electrical circuits."

NCTE 6. "Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and non-print texts."

Us, S. 4. (2016). Elementary physical science - energy Transformations. Retrieved November 28, 2016, from http://www.science4us.com/elementary-physical-science/energy/energy-transformations/?unit=energy&demo=useyourclues

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The fiction book, "Change It!: Solids, Liquids, Gases and You" by Adrienne Mason will be read to the class prior to learning about states of matter. After they will create foldables to use as references and learning materials.

MLS.1.I.a. "Observe that the total mass of a material remains constant whether it is together, in parts, or in a different state."

NCTE. 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).

Mason, A., Dávila, C., & D, C. (2005). Change it!: Solids, liquids, gases and you. Toronto: Kids Can Press.

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This past week, our fifth graders learned about the seven properties of matter: physical properties, chemical properties, weight, mass, volume, density, and bou

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Students will complete ecosystems interactive notebooks which include reading passages and short answer written responses, graphic organizers, drawings, etc.
Prior to working on the notebooks the class will read "Ecology: The Study of Ecosystems" by Susan H. Gray to gain knowledge of ecosystems.
MLS.2.A.4.a. " Classify populations of organisms as producers and consumers by the role they serve in the ecosystem."

NCTE.3 "Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics)."

Gray, S. H. (2012). Ecology: The study of Ecosystems. New York: Children’s Press.

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Ecosystems and Ecology Unit for Interactive Science Notebook! This resource is part of the Earth Science (Entire) Curriculum.

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Math: Fractions- Practice Review and Games

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Math: Fractions- Practice Review and Games

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Students will read the fiction book "Pizza Counting" by Christina Dobson prior to playing common denominator war.

MLS.NF.4.B.a. "Understand addition and subtraction of fractions as joining/composing and separating/decomposing parts referring to the same whole.
NCTE. 2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.

Dobson, C., & Holmes, M. (2003). The pizza counting book. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge Publishing.

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Play Common Denominator War | Activity | Education.com

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Competitors go head-to-head only this time it's a race to figure out the lowest common multiple of two numbers; an important step to working with fractions!

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Math: Add and Subtract with Word Problems

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Math: Add and Subtract with Word Problems

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Students will read "Math Curse" by Jon Sciezka in addition to using IXL learning online to complete problems of subtraction and addition similar to those in the book.
MLS.NBT.4.F. "Demonstrate fluency with addition and subtraction of whole numbers."

NCTE 3. "Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics)."

Scieszka, J., & Smith, L. (2007). Math curse. New York, NY: Viking Children’s Books.

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IXL | Addition and subtraction word problems | 3rd grade math

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Improve your math knowledge with free questions in "Addition and subtraction word problems" and thousands of other math skills.

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Math: Rounding and Rapping- Music and Songs

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Math: Rounding and Rapping- Music and Songs

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The rap will teach students understanding of the text by adding rhythm to it and reciting it in unison. The rap will also help when rounding. NCTE 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics)."

MLS.NBT.4.A "Round multi-digit whole numbers to any place."

NCTE. 12 "Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information)."

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We might be wrapping in whole class small groups when none of my kids know this stuff and OH WAIT, we don't teach it this year... LOL Mr. H is gonna get his rap on this week! Rounding Rap