At the end of the school year, I like to have my students complete a research unit. Last year, we focused on HEROES! Students had to complete 3 assignments with this project: A Hero Tale, a Hero Newspaper, and a Hero Poem. My colleague and I created graphic organizers for each part of the project.
You can click the image below to enlarge.
This year, I decided to spend 2 months covering black history events. We started in Africa in the 1300’s – 1500’s, and then we traveled to the United States in the time of slavery. We got through the Civil War and the Reconstruction period. We then covered the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and where we are now as it relates to equality.
Students were assigned one or two individuals to research and create a digital board as well as a tri-fold presentation board. All of the reading lessons were tied to a skill and a the week’s study. We found facts and opinions in a newspaper from the time of slavery. We compared and contrasted kings and queens in Africa. We looked at the elements of drama through a play that focused on the Greensboro sit ins. We planned out a new Civil Rights Museum using area and perimeter concepts. We converted fractions to decimals and found equivalent fractions for our Black History Timeline. The students absolutely LOVED this unit, and it was a joy to be able to help them learn about a part of our country’s history that is all too often skipped over.
The students also created an Equality Quote Quilt with famous quotes from important figures in the fight for equality.
At the end of the unit of study, I organized a commemorative Selma to Montgomery March, which was 50 years after the actual march in Alabama. In our march, 4th and 5th graders marched around the school, singing “I ain’t gon’ let nobody turn me around” in harmony. The march ended in the library with a beautiful slideshow of images from black history with “Lift Every Voice” – the National Negro Anthem – playing in the background. The students all sat quietly glued to the screen, where many of them saw these images for the first time.
I remember days later, one of the 5th grade teachers came up to me and told me that next year, we really need to plan (even earlier) to incorporate more black history into our lessons. I could not agree more!
In Texas, the teaching standards for 4th grade a mostly similar to Common Core for math, but they veer in a completely different direction with the unit on Personal Financial Literacy. I wish I had learned these skills when I was coming up, so I LOVE teaching them to my students. Well, we spent a few weeks talking about budgets, fixed expenses vs. variable expenses, income, and savings… And then I wanted the students to put these skills into action!
In this research project, students had to choose a career, find the median salary for this career, create a budget based on the median salary, find a car to purchase online, find a place to live online, and then put whatever leftover money they had towards savings. The budget was created in Excel, and there were formulas for students.
After their budget was completed, the students were ready for the real work of researching their job. Their final product was going to be made into a book, typed from Microsoft Word. To prepare for this, I created a graphic organizer (packet) that helped them find and source the information and then led them to writing each paragraph. There were sentence starters in 3 of the 6 chapters, as well as a bonus chapter for extra credit. Students were given the choice of their book design, and once they selected their design, their Word document would open, which was a book template that they were able to customize. This book has a plethora of text features, like a graph, a glossary, citations page, table of contents, section headings, italics, bold print, photographs, and captions, etc. I am excited about seeing my students’ final products!
In the meantime, here are images from my sample/example book that I shared with my students.
Also, here is a link to our project website, which has most of the resources that my students used. The graphic organizer or project summary page are not posted here.
http://monthlybudget.edublogs.org/
Last year, the school I was at had a subscription for ST Math. I am a believer in the effectiveness and usefulness of the ST Math program by Mind Research! It was not my teaching curriculum, but it was a tool in my tool belt that allowed me to give my students the time and chance to apply the skills that I taught. The program gives immediate feedback to the students and amazing visualizations of the major skills that they are expected to know. I used the following spreadsheet to track all 4th grade students at my school last year. I used the data to show me who needed more time on the program and to project where they would most likely be at the time of our high stakes testing, the DC CAS. The goal was for students to reach 75% syllabus progress in the game by the time of the test. I taught all but 11 of these students in math, and for those that needed more time on the program, I would tailor their instruction time. That being said, I would ensure that they received a math lesson each day, as well as some time to apply the new skill. Then, I would send them to the computers or iPads, and have the other students work on an advanced lesson. I would even have the students that were further along on ST Math to coach their peers, helping them think to get to the answer, rather than just telling them the answer. I would also send this spreadsheet to my colleagues each week, so that they could see who also needed more time on the computer program and allow them to log on to the program when appropriate.
This was the final ST Math wall at the end of the school year. The majority of the 4th graders had reached 100% completion. Even more exciting was the fact that all but one of the students on my roster reached 100% completion.
My students love our review games, and one of the most popular games we played this year was the American Revolution game. Our reading theme for this instructional window was the American Revolution, so I thought of a way to incorporate that theme into a math game. What resulted was a way for us to potentially “rewrite history” with a battle between all of the sides that had a stake in this “New World”. In our game, we had the British, the French, the Colonists, the Native Americans, the Enslaved People, and the Freeman’s Bureau (free blacks). Each student was placed on one of the six sides. Each side had a Commander/General and a 2nd in Command, which were made up of our weakest and strongest students. We played this game in my classroom with all of the fourth graders at one time to maximize our instructional time and encourage the peer tutoring. This was a game where all students had to have the same thing written on the boards for their teams, and points were awarded for teams that worked well together. Teams could spend as much time as they needed on each problem because early finishers were given “sneak attack” opportunities, which were additional problems the teachers would give finished teams to work on while the other teams completed the problem. Teams could earn additional points if they were called on to explain how they arrived at their answer. This meant that the higher students needed to make sure that the others on their team knew the content and could tell someone else how to do it. One student, who receives special education services in reading and math, was so thankful for his 2nd in Command (a higher student) because he really showed him how to do the problems!
Select slides from this game are displayed below.
In this teaching profession, I have grown accustomed to working without any recognition because when all is said and done, my job is really not about me! It is about equipping the youth for future success. That being said, it is always nice to get a little recognition or “Good job” ever so often!
Well the other day, I was notified that I would be receiving an award for my students’ achievement and growth on the Achievement Network (ANET) benchmark assessments. Once the event started, we were notified that out of over 1,000 teachers, between 20 and 30 teachers were being recognized at this event for our students’ growth. What an honor!
