Postcards from Ellis Island

Our  new Grade 4 Common Core ELA unit is about the stories of "Immigration."  The kids love it!!!  I am sure they have been talking about it at the dinner table.  We have been reading many fictional and non-fictional books.  We even took a virtual tour of Ellis Island with Scholastic.

One of the activities that they loved were the Postcards.  We read the book "At Ellis Island: A History in Many Voices."  The book has so much going on...it takes 2-3 readings to do it justice.  We read it the first time for Sera's story (a fictional character).  The second reading we read and discussed the immigrants quotes and the captions.  There are many great photos and illustrations on every page.

The next thing I did was copy a page from "I Was Dreaming to Come to America" for every student, along with the short biographical page in the back.  I had them read the pages and write a postcard from the point of view of their immigrant.  We discussed that their postcard would be based on facts but will include some realistic-fiction details.

Here are some of their postcards:

Visit from Author Julie Berry

The fourth grade students in our school were lucky to have a visit from children's author Julie Berry.  She gave a presentation to all the fourth graders and then spent the day leading classroom workshops.  

Julie gave the kids many ideas to get their creative juices flowing and how to make their stories original.

The children were so excited to start their own stories after Julie modeled some ideas.

Watt's Up Thomas Edison???

One of our new Common Core ELA Units is called "Figure it Out."  It is about notable people who overcame challenges to become successful in life.  We read about Helen Keller, Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington Carver and Thomas Edison.

We created lap-books about Thomas Edison.  Here are some samples of the student's work.  It also fits in with our electricity unit.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!!!

We celebrated Read Across America and Dr. Seuss' birthday yesterday at school with readers from the Middle School.  They come every year and share their favorite Dr. Seuss book with every class.  I was very happy to see a former student walk into my classroom wearing a hat and whiskers on his face.  He chose "The Lorax."  Thanks for coming Douglas!