4th Grade Social Studies in 1999

I was supposed to show you the “after” pictures of my office and playroom today but a couple unplanned things came up and then of course I found a box of pictures when I was cleaning up and it turned into an If You Give A Mouse A Cookie kind of situation.

So I’ll show you this instead.

I taught 4th grade for the six years prior to getting married.

I started off in a self contained classroom, and then for the last three or four years I had the AMAZING experience of co-teaching in a classroom with one of those folding walls that you could open.

We taught most things together.

Our social studies curriculum covered the 13 colonies.

And every year we created a living museum.

The kids did a major research project on a topic of their choice.

The actual project could be anything.

Kids made posters, models, board games, stop-motion movies, power point presentations… you name it, they did it.

Every single part of the project was completed in school.

We taught the kids how to research and take notes. How to organize their information. How to plan out a long-term project.

At the same time that we were working on individual projects, we transformed the entire classroom into the thirteen colonies.

We made floor to ceiling murals by projecting images with the overhead projector onto huge sheets of paper on the walls.

Every kid helped paint the murals.

We invited parents and every other classroom in the building to come and tour the thirteen colonies.

The kids dressed up in colonial attire. (I didn’t find any pictures of the kids on the actual presentation days).

And so did the teachers.

It was exhausting and draining and exciting and entertaining and AWESOME.

I wish I had appreciated it more at the time, because I miss those days of teaching.

Looking back, they were the end of an era, and I’m so grateful I was able to be a part of them.