Ms. Kreul’s Class Blog

It’s August and that means it is time for the Wisconsin State Fair!

Make plans to take your family to the State Fair to sample delicious cream puffs, enjoy the rides on the Midway, drink delicious flavored milk, marvel at the many types – and sizes – of farm animals, see singers, dancers, and magicians, watch animal judging, and much much more!

What is your favorite thing to do at the State Fair? ♥

Write a post for your blog or comment below and let us know.

4K has begun a short unit on Wisconsin in social studies. Among other activities, teams of students will be reading about Wisconsin’s history, geography, government, and people, then presenting WI facts to classmates using posters, songs, maps, or other formats of their choosing. In other words, they are the teachers for this unit!

Students have completed their Wade House essays, based on their field trip to Wade House in Greenbush on May 11. They used the field trip packet work, the notes taken on the field trip, and their experiences at Wade House to take on the role of a person who lived at, worked at, or visited Wade House in the 1860s.

Students were assessed on their essay in several language arts categories: writing process (packet work, notes, graphic organizer, and illustration), content (accurate information from the time and place), organization (sentences, paragraphs, and essay), conventions (spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and usage), illustration (from the Carriage Museum), and presentation (overview of the person’s life).

On Monday, May 11, fourth graders traveled back in time to Wisconsin in the 1860s when they visited Wade House in Greenbush. Now they are taking on the roles of people who lived, worked, or visited Wade House during that period in history, and writing essays about their lives.

Students took notes, made sketches, and worked on related worksheets before, during, and after the trip, and are using these materials to help them create their Wade House essays.

This writing project follows lessons focused on writing with the traits of ideas, voice, word choice, and sentence fluency, and takes students to the next level – writing with from the perspective of a person (real or fictional) who was connected with Wade House in the 1860s.

Students will also focus on the steps of the writing process during this project – prewriting, drafting, editing and revising, and writing – then typing – their final draft.

Wade House essays will be posted on the class web page in the next few weeks – so stay tuned!

Fourth graders will be going on an exciting social studies field trip to Wade House on Monday, May 11. Wade House is a stagecoach inn built in the 1860s located in Greenbush, WI.

This historical site also includes a sawmill, a blacksmith shop, and a carriage museum. Students will learn about life at Wade House in the mid 19th century from the viewpoint of visitors, as well as those who lived there.

This is a full day field trip for academic purposes, which is different than a family trip, and students will have related activities to complete on the bus, at Wade House, and back at school.

For the follow-up language arts project, students will take on the character of a person who visited, lived in, or worked at Wade House in the 1860s and describe what life was like in those days.
A note with more information about the field trip is included in today’s Friday folder.

Fourth graders had the opportunity to tour our beautiful Wisconsin state capitol in Madison this week. They learned a bit about Wisconsin’s history and government in Madison and will be learning more in social studies in a few weeks. For now, your family can take a virtual tour of the capital via the official web site: Wisconsin State Capitol