Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Familiar States

Jonah and Micah's 4th grade class had state report/projects due the first week of May. The previous month, the students in the class each chose which state they wanted to do their presentation on. Micah picked Virginia, and Jonah got Utah. We have family members living in both of these states, so the projects felt more personal for them. 

We asked family members living in those states to send us some postcards about where they live, because we thought it would add some nice visuals to their displays. Aunt Lisa sent a package to Micah with multiple postcards from Virginia. Uncle Gideon and Aunt Tabbi sent Jonah some postcards from Utah, and Tabbi also sent a package to Jonah with some salt water taffy. It was so fun for the boys to receive mail from their family members, and it gave them an extra boost to finish the project! 

Jonah and Micah both researched the information required for their state reports on their own--their iPods really came in handy for this project! They also looked up information in books that they couldn't find online. They researched a little each night for over a week until they both had sufficient details about their state. Then they both wrote their own reports and typed up the information all by themselves. When I proofread each child's report, I was so astonished and proud of what they had individually accomplished. They had used complete and descriptive sentences, and had separated the information into paragraphs that were labeled with headings stating the different required criteria (for example: history, capital, economy, etc.).

The only thing I helped them with was creating the visual display for their projects. I cut out a large shape of each child's state from white poster, and then pasted it onto a black poster board. We cut out their printed reports, and adhered them inside the white part of the state cut-outs. Then we added many of the postcards (and a few extras) onto the black poster around the outline of the state. We worked together one night creating the displays, and we were really happy with the way they turned out.

On Micah's poster, we added some brads, then attached some yarn to the brads and taped the other end on the back side of the postcards. That way you could flip the postcards over to read the information about what the landmarks were.

On Jonah's poster, we also used brads, and placed one next to each postcard, then strung a yarn to where that landmark is specifically located in the state, and added another brad to mark the spot--so basically it resembled a giant map.

When each boy presented their report and display to the class, they read all the information on the poster, then they talked about some of the postcards and people they knew and/or places they'd been in that state, then they answered questions from their classmates, and they finished by giving treats to their classmates. Micah gave everyone two large swedish fish representing Virginia, because his Fisher cousins live there, and they love to go fishing in the Atlantic Ocean. Jonah gave everyone two salt water taffies representing Utah because they're made by the Great Salt Lake Candy Co.

Both boys scored a 100% on their reports. Not only did they do well, but they also learned more about each state, and had fun doing it, too! Thank you Lisa, Tabbi, and Gideon for making their reports more special!

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