Pioneer Day

This week, we were ready a story, "On the Banks of Plum Creek" by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It is the perfect time to make some extensions to our learning. In fourth grade, we call these days, "EXTRAVAGANZAS" or learning parties.

We started on Thursday by watching a television episode of Little House on the Prairie. We met in Ms. Prose's room. We made some comparisons and contrasts between what we read in our text book and the video.

On Friday, we started by making butter. Each student took a turn. While we were working on our butter, students were creating a wagon train of Vocabulary lesson 6 words and reading a biography about Laura Ingalls Wilder. We learned that her series of books are considered historical fiction, not biographies.

Many students worked one-on-one with Ms. Leom to "polish" their comprehension questions. We worked on adding words from the question in our answers. We worked on rereading, USING the article to answer the questions, and writing specific questions. It was a lot of work, and some students spent significantly more time on their learning that they imagined. We've been talking a lot in class about our classroom community being a "safe place to learn" and a "safe place to make mistakes". When it is ok to make mistakes, we open ourselves to the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and make improvements. Successful students are students who keep trying. I was SO PROUD of the students who kept trying! I enjoyed the individual time with them!

The BEST part of our extravaganza ... eating our butter on freshly baked breads from the kitchen!