Immigrant Projects and more

The students have finished and presented their immigrant projects. They did a nice job researching their topics and presenting their information.

We are working on famous Ohio inventors and creating inventions now. The students nominated one of five Ohio inventors for the Ohio Inventor Wall of Fame. I will post pictures of those after they present.

To go along with the inventor unit, we have learned a great deal about toys and their history. We learned about different Frisbee designs and tested some of those out. We looked at the history of jumping rope and watched a video of the King's Firecrackers in celebration. Today we tested several toys after reading Leo Cockroach, Toy Tester. The students graphed the results of a safety and fun rating after playing with the toys. We will now begin our own design process. The students will brainstorm several problems and try to develop solutions for these problems. We will become inventors!

Immigrant Projects

The students have been busy exploring specific immigrant groups that have settled in Ohio. We have researched why these groups left their homeland, why they came to Ohio, where they settled in Ohio, and the culture and customs they have contributed to our state. We are working in groups to create projects about these groups: Irish, Amish, Germans, Shakers, and African-Americans. The students have been working hard to create flip books, maps, posters, and plays about our diverse state. I will post pictures when we finish our projects and present them to the class.

Business Projects

The students have just completed an economics unit. We learned how businesses are created, how resources are used to create businesses, and how profits can be made. The students then created their own business plan and made advertisements for their business. It was a lot of fun and they proved to be quite creative.

In science, we just finished a unit on the changes that Earth's surface can undergo. We talked about slow changes and rapid changes. Of course, the students were very interested in the volcano, landslide, and earthquake information. We even watched a video clip of an actual landslide as it followed a young man down a street. Scary stuff!

The Battle of Fallen Timbers

Wow! It's been quite awhile since I've had the time to write. I have been very busy preparing for two major events coming up this month. The first is our District Family Science Day and the second is our Second Annual ACE Talent Show. I am very excited to be involved with both.

The fourth grade team has been busy preparing for the Ohio Achievement Assessments. Mr. Tausch came to speak with the students about putting forth their best effort on the assessments. He offered some very good incentives for next week. Hopefully I will be able to 'bust a move' with all of the fourth graders next Friday. Mrs. Troyer, our guidance counselor, has also been joining us on Thursdays to offer testing tips and strategies. The students have really enjoyed her skits and advice.

The last project the students completed was a sequencing activity to review the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The classes worked so hard to illustrate the causes and effects of the war. The were able to choose to make a book or a roll movie to show off their talent. The had to match the summary with each picture and then put the events in order. We are now working on productive resources and economics in social studies.

In science, we are working on the forces that change the landforms of the Earth. The students conducted a wind and water lab last week. Our focus was on erosion and weathering. The students also learned about deposition and the landforms created by that process. Some of the examples of those landforms are dunes, deltas, and moraines. They will have a quiz tomorrow.