The fourth grade social studies theme for the year is immigration because the United States is a country full of immigrants — people who moved here from elsewhere. As we look at different immigrant stories we will consider the following questions:
- Why do people immigrate?
- What was their journey like?
- What were their initial impressions of the new country?
- How do they assimilate yet maintain what is important from their country or place of origin?
So let’s begin with YOU! Each of you has just immigrated to Big Dalton from another school. What has that been like for each of you? No doubt you have memories, feelings, and ideas to communicate about this on your first day in your new environment. And what better way to represent these than visually — in a creative map! I want you to be imaginative and to have fun with this.
Think about how you can represent your journey from a familiar place to one that is new (the same experience all new immigrants have) visually. You can use words, pictures, lines, and all sorts of things. These maps can have keys, symbols, labels, whatever you want! (They do need to have correct spelling and such as we are going to display them in the classroom for your parents and all visitors to see — do remember that even as you have fun with this!) Here are a few to get you started thinking about how you want to do your own.
Dear Edinger House,
You all took to blogs this year like ducks to water! I can’t believe how easily you learned how to write posts, make links, podcasts, stick in images, and so much more! Hopefully, this won’t be your last chance to blog — in fact, I’m hoping some of you will be able to blog again as early as next year. So today I want you to reflect on the blogging experience. Begin by checking that you have all your posts published. Some of you still have posts in draft that you need to finish and publish. Next go through your posts and think about what you learned doing them. What did you especially like? What did you not like? What were your favorite parts of doing a blog? Would you like to do another blog next year? If so, what would you like it to be? (You might want to link to some of your favorite posts as you do this.)
Thanks for being super bloggers this year!
Ms. Edinger
Congratulations! Your wonderful comics are all now published here! I’m also putting the links to each comic on this post so you can easily go visit them. They are wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!
Terrific debate, folks! Tremendous points made by all of you! Now you need to write YOUR reponse to the question in a blog post. You can argue against the resolution, for it, agree with your own statements — or not. Now is your chance to state your own opinion on this important topic.
Okay, you’ve read the book and seen the movie. Now what?
Next Monday you all will be participating in a debate considering whether or not the MGM movie is a good adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s book The Wizard of Oz. Proper debating (as done in high school and college debating societies) has a very specific structure which we will adapt for you to use.
First of all, you will be randomly assigned to argue for or against this resolution.
Secondly, you will need to prepare to argue your position at the debate on Monday. Use your books and the list of movie scenes (to jog your memory) to come up with several points in favor of your position. These must be ready by the end of today. (You will have the rest of this period and lab to do them.)
Finally, be ready on Monday to argue your position in the actual debate! We will video it for this blog. At the end of the debate you will write a blog post giving your personal feelings about this question. Will your feelings change after the debate? We will see!
Here are some things to consider when developing your argument:
- Changes
- Things left out
- Characters
- Additions
Today you are going to learn how to record and then create a post with a podcast in it. This will be practice so that next week you will be able to record your third grade buddy when he or she interviews you. Today you will be taught by Ms. Nickles how to do this.
Once you understand what to do, get started — do a brief recording of yourself telling about your Pilgrlm story. It can be in the voice of your character, it could be a piece of your interview, or the beginning of your story. That is up to you. Then this will be embedded into a blog post about this project.
I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
I must ask two favors. First, you must write me a letter.
As you know, that is from the mysterious first note found by Miranda in Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, the amazing book I just finished reading to you. It was very cool to sneak peaks at your faces yesterday as I read aloud the last part — you were absolutely riveted as all the different threads were tied up. And so today it is your turn — to write your own letters about this remarkable book — on your blogs. My hope is that you will all write thoughtful and interesting ones that I can mention on my blog so that others interested in how children respond to the book will come to see and read them (and, hopefully, comment as well).
First of all, a fun tidbit. The book takes place, as you know, in 1979 and the television show, $20,000 Pyramid plays a major part in the story. Go here to see a clip of the original show and then come back….
Back? Good. Now here are a few ideas of things to consider for your blog post —we’ll add a few more today as well.
- The title — what do you think of it? Would there be a better one? (One person I know suggested The Laughing Man —what do you think of that?)
- The cover — some don’t like it. Do you? Do you want to draw a better one and post it on your blog? Explain why it is what it is.
- Chapter titles are mostly “Things that…” which is the way to do your answer for The $20,000 Pyramid.
- How did you feel about it being SO mysterious? Were you able to wait until all became clear?
- Veil metaphor — when was it lifted for you?
- Wrinkle in Time
- For kids who are comfortable with many different threads and things going on all at once.