US States and Capitals

We have begun learning about the 50 states.  We will go through them all, one region at a time.  Our first region is the Southwest region, which has only four states.  (Ask your fourth grader if they know them!) For each region that we cover, this is what we expect the kids to take away from it:

• Names of the states
• Capital cities
• Important bodies of water (lakes, rivers, oceans, etc.)
• Important land features (Rocky Mountains, Grand Canyon, etc.)
• Important historical events (The Gold Rush, The Civil War, etc.)
• Important landmarks (The Alamo, The Gateway Arch, National Parks, etc.)

This may seem like a lot, but it's really more of just an exposure to our country.  If there was to be one main focus, it would be on the states and the capital cities.  To help with that, here are some links to some fun US States and Capitals games:

• US Map Test - You need to drag the names of the US states to their correct location on the map before you run out of time.  Regrettably, this game leaves out Alaska and Hawaii.  Can you believe that?!?!
• US Map Puzzle - This one has three different versions of gameplay: (1) States With Outlines, (2) States Without Outlines, and (3) Capitals.  It's fun to watch how students improve their knowledge over time.  How fast can you put the puzzles together?
• USA Games - An excellent assortment of games and tutorials designed to teach and test your knowledge of the United States.  Even has lakes and rivers too!

Thanksgiving Means...

We did another one of those "word cloud" activities today.  The kids wrote blog posts.  They wrote about Thanksgiving, and what it means to them.  The turkey-shaped word cloud is shown below.  Recall that the bigger the font of the word, the more times it was used in the blog posts.  It's a nice way to get a collective view of what fourth graders think about Thanksgiving.

Cow Sightings!

Carly's cow overlooking downtown Port

land, OR

Some of the reports on our Cows on the Loose have started to come in.  We have photographic evidence that our cows have been seen all across the country...from Washington D.C. all the way to Portland, OR.  Check it out:

Cows on the Loose!

Weekend Reporter on Wordle

Once again this week, we did our Weekend Reporters on our KidBlogs. I really like how much more some of the 4th graders write when we do them this way! Also, it's fun to read some of the comments that they leave on their classmate's blogs. As I mentioned last week, the blogs are private and you can't read them without logging in. Students are able to log in at home, and you can read them that way.

In the mean time, I took the text from ALL of this week's Weekend Reporters and imported it into a Wordle word cloud. For those unfamiliar, Wordle generates a word cloud from text, giving more prominence to more frequently occurring words.  Here's what we came up with:

Do you see anything that you might recognize?

The Cows Have Been Set Loose!

Most of the cows went out via US Mail earlier this week.  Here's a map showing the destinations of the cows that have been set loose:

WKCE Testing is Done!

4th Graders finishing up the WKCE testing!

As I write this post, the students in room 148 are finishing up with four long, grueling days of WCKE testing! Overall, I have to say that the class has done pretty well with this. I don't ever get to look at the tests, so I'm not sure how well they did. I don't even really know what they were tested on. All I know is that most of the fourth graders felt pretty confident that they scored well on most of the tests. We're just glad that it's over! Now we can get back to Spelling tests and Multiplication facts and stories in our big purple Reading books! (I think we're going to have to re-learn a few of the rules and expectations too!)

November Book Project

Since we had so much fun with the October Book Project, we have decided to do another one in November.  Our genre for this month is Historical Fiction.  These books are based on real historical events, but in which the characters are not real, and the minor events may not be realistic. Hopefully, your fourth grader has already chosen their book, and has a good start on reading it!

Once the kids are done reading their books, they will do the following "Bag-It" project:

November Book Project

The project is due on Friday, December 2nd.  We will present our projects to the rest of the class.

Does your fourth grader want to read MORE Historical Fiction?  Here are the search results for Historical Fiction books in our Oaklawn school library:

Historical Fiction Search Results

Cows on the Loose!

The 4th graders at Oaklawn Elementary are participating in a project called "Cows on the Loose!"  Each student has decorated a paper cow cut-out, and created a "travel journal" to go with it.  The cows will be mailed out from school to a friend or relative of each fourth grader.  It could be someone who lives in another part of the state, or in another part of the country, or even another part of the world.  Hopefully, the friend or relative receiving the cow will take a photo of the cow near or amidst an important place or landmark in their area.  Then, that person can e-mail the photo back to our classroom at the following address: cowsontheloose2@msd.k12.wi.us.  Also, we hope that the person will take a few moments to write out an entry in the cow's travel journal. Don't worry, there is a complete set of instructions that travel with the cows!

After the friend or relative is done with the cow, we ask that they send it on to someone else, in perhaps a different geographic location.  In this way we will accumulate pictures and information about all kinds of different places!

Clearly, this project only works if the cows keep moving, so any help you can give toward that end would be appreciated.

Click here for a copy of the letter that is mailed out with each cow (it's stapled securely into the Travel Journal that will accompany the cows.)

You will be able to track each cow's travels and adventures right here:

Cows on the Loose!