Hawaiian Islands Project

This school year, I decided to have my fourth graders each choose a Hawaiian Island to research and present to the class. I like to provide my students with choices, so I allowed the children to decide which way they wanted to create their project. A lot of them chose to create PowerPoint Presentations as this was something new for my students. I had one student who chose to put her information into a travel magazine. Another student had a poster to go along with her PowerPoint. I left the creativity open for them.

As for the work, I gave the students time to write down notes for their islands while we were at the library or the computer lab. The students learned how to use the indexes of books to find relevant information when we had our library times. They also learned which websites are trustworthy when we were at the computer lab. It was great watching them help each other to find good information for their projects.

The students also learned how to manage their time as they had to have their notes completed by a certain due date and then their project ready to present by another due date. While we did work on a lot of the project at school, some of the project still had elements to complete at home. The children not only worked on their writing skills, but they also worked on their speaking and listening skills too. Most of them spoke loudly and clearly on the presentation day. They listened respectfully to their peers share about the Hawaiian Islands. It was quite a fun, rewarding project!

Here are the directions for the Hawaiian Islands Project that you can feel free to edit to meet your class' needs:

Hawaiian Islands Project

Directions:

1. Choose 1 of the 8 main Hawaiian Islands to study. Get approval from Mrs. K by Thursday, September 3, 2015.

2. Find resources about your island to read soon.  Your textbook has a little bit of information to get you started. There are some books in the classroom that you may borrow. We may use the encyclopedias and the computers at the library to do some research on Fridays. We will also use some Monday computer lab time to do online research as well. You may want to ask parents to kindly take you to the public library to check out resources too. Maybe they could put books on hold for you so that they will be available when you do get a chance to go.

3. Start taking notes about your island on note cards. Keep your note cards in a safe place so that they do not get lost.

4. Write down each resource’s bibliography information right after you decide it is good enough to take notes from. Please see the Bibliography form that I will pass out for examples. We will practice and work on the Bibliography together at school. But you want to make sure you have the needed information, especially if it is a website so that you can find the website again.

5. Let’s aim to have all of our notes written by Wednesday, September 23, 2015.

6. Then we must organize our notes by topics to write a report.

7. You may choose how you want to present your report. You could do a traditional paper, create a poster with the different topics, create a PowerPoint (with the report in the notes section and your big points in the PowerPoint), or create a booklet, pamphlet, or magazine. The report should be neatly handwritten or typed.

8. Make sure you include a map of your island too. You may want other photos or drawings to make it more interesting as well.

9. Wednesday, October 7, 2015 is when we will present our projects to the class.

3-Column Cornell Notes

My fourth graders know how to use 2-column Cornell notes from learning the process in 3rd grade.  However, the 3-column Cornell notes is a new tool for them which I was excited to teach them!  I began by modeling how to fold their page into 3 columns in their notebooks.  I told them to fold the paper over so that there is about as much white space on either side of the red margin line.  I walked around to each table group so that they could observe where I was going to make my first fold.  After we checked to make sure everyone had correctly made their first fold (I asked kids to check their partners' folds), then I showed how to simply fold over that folded rectangle to make one more.  I reminded the students that it does not have to be perfect thirds, but should be close enough.

It took a few days of modeling how to fold the paper into thirds, but the students were soon pros at doing so on their own!  I have demonstrated to the students the purpose of the three columns in being able to fold the page over to quiz one's self to study.  I usually have the students write a question in the first column, the answer in the second column, and an example in the third column.  For example, we are learning about each of the 8 main Hawaiian islands right now.  In our first column we wrote, "What are some facts about Ni'ihau?" Then in our middle column we listed some of the facts that we had read in our textbooks.  In the last column we drew pictures that matched up to our notes.  Most of the students enjoyed the added drawing dimension of the lesson.  It also helped that we were pretending to fly to each of the islands and were on a tour.  The notebook was our scrapbook of our adventures.  The kids had fun "taking pictures" to remember their major points of interest on each island.

Parent Night Brochure

It is very important to communicate with parents.  One way to let them know what their child will be learning this year in your class is to create a brochure of your subject area(s).  I also include ways that they can help their child be successful in my class and ways to contact me on the brochure.  You could include information about homework, classroom procedures, a schedule of the day, a description of the different resources/books/activities that the students will be using or doing, etc.  I used Microsoft Publisher to create my brochure, but Microsoft word could also be used. 

Here's what the inside flap, back cover, and front cover look like on my brochure:

Here's what the inside of the brochure looks like:

Sorting Cards

A really cool way for the kids to review is by creating sorting cards.  I created a couple of different sorting cards to use the last couple of weeks in fourth grade Social Studies.  The most recent set was created to review the steps of how the Hawaiian Islands were formed.  I typed up the steps into a table in Word.  I left boxes in the table blank so that I could draw in pictures once I printed out the page.  It took me about 20 minutes to type, print, and draw the pictures.  Then I made enough copies so that there is one per student.  I had also printed each step on a separate page in larger letters and drew bigger pictures so that I could have a set to use as a class.  This took longer (I added color to the pictures since I can be a bit of a perfectionist). I then laminated the larger set in the hope that I can use it again next year (if I am fortunate enough to teach Social Studies again).  I used a paper-cutter to chop the boxes apart quickly.  You could have the students cut out the pieces, but I was trying to save some of their learning time.  I put each set into a separate plastic baggie.

For the lesson, we read and took Cornell notes on the stages of how a volcano forms and becomes an island.  Then I passed out either a paper with a written step on it or a paper with the drawing of that step to sixteen of my students.  I asked those with the words to go up to the front of the room and try to put themselves in order.  They did pretty well with only some support from their friends.  Then we had the students with the pictures try to match up to the right words.  They did fairly well too.  We then passed out the cards again to let other students have a turn too.

Afterwards, we let each team of three or four students work on sorting the island formation steps that they were given in the plastic baggies.  It was a race between teams!  After students had a chance to practice in teams, they then tried it with a partner and finally by themselves.  At the end of the lesson, students wrote/drew in their reflection journals what stages they could remember of the islands being formed.

Here is the link to the lesson plan:
Hawaiian Island Formation Lesson Plan

Geography Game Show

My students had a lot of fun reviewing where the continents and oceans are located, as well as learning where Hawaii is located.  I like to use my game show host voice and turn learning into a game whenever I can.  It came to me on the spot to put up on the overhead projector the dry erase board with the world map that the kids had been practicing on with their teams. 

Then I said in my announcer voice, " The Fourth Grade Geography Game Show will start in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.  Good morning boys and girls. Welcome to the Geography Game Show.  I am your host and you are in for some really great fun today.  Now here are the rules to the game.  First rule, you must raise your hand if you would like to be picked to participate on the game show.  Second rule, play fair and do not call out the answers.  Only contestants raising a quiet hand will be chosen for a chance to win."

The game began with me calling out a number of a place on the map.  The students were awesome about raising their hands to answer (which I praised them for remembering their hands). I called on a student and to encourage audience participation, I asked the other students to give a thumbs-up if they agreed with the answer, a thumbs-down if they disagreed, and a thumbs in the middle if they were unsure.  I had participation from practically everyone the whole time.  It became an awesome review day!

Textbook Worries

Now I am not the biggest textbook teacher.  I understand that textbooks have a lot of information that is valuable to teaching.  Students also need to learn in upper elementary how textbooks are set up, where to find information, how to take notes from textbooks in order to be successful in middle school, high school, and definitely in college.  Therefore, I do use textbooks some in my classroom to prepare my students for their future educational careers. 

When I saw the condition of the 4th grade textbooks at the end of last year, I was in shock.  Covers are partially ripped.  A lot of them had pages falling out of the books.  Some even have missing pages as I discovered this week when we started to use them.  However awful they looked to me (and possibly my students), there was a lot of excitement in my classroom this week when I had the students get them out for the first time.  I had intended to give the kids about five minutes to flip through the pages to see what they would be studying, but there were so many cool observations and conversations happening among my students that I let them have closer to 20 minutes to build up their excitement for the year.  I guess it goes to prove that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

The Purpose

The purpose of this blog is to share ideas for those of us teaching 4th grade Social Studies, specifically in Hawaii.  As most Social Studies teachers know, 4th grade is the year students learn about their state.  This is my first year teaching 4th grade Social Studies, so I have a lot to learn.  I will share my lesson plans, advice from what I have tried, and look forward to anyone who would like to share more ideas of what I can do to help my students learn their Hawaiian history and make progress on the Common Core Language Arts goals too.