One year ago, fourth grade teacher Jackie Siwek had her 27 students research one of the fifty states and make a poster and accompanying commercial. The students displayed their posters to parents and teachers Friday, May 23 in the Auburn Elementary School gymnasium during the Shelby State Fair.
This year every fourth grader participated in the project. There were 76 posters displaying all 50 states and some cities. In addition to the posters, the students made state-specific commercials, brought food that is popular from the state, and each student wore clothes that represented their state or city.
“This really helps them get interested and wanting to learn about their state,” said Siwek. Some students even want to visit their studied state to go on vacation there.
According to Siwek, the school actively tries to engage the students with hands-on learning, and incorporate technology on a daily basis. Siwek’s fourth grade class, for example, never touches pencil to paper. They work from the cloud.
“I have technology everyday in my classroom. We used Presentation from Google Drive to make our commercials,” explained Siwek. She also said the students each have their own Chrome Book. Siwek even developed her own password protected website that the students can check from home if they are absent for a day.
“I’m a tech geak. My husband is too; anything new in technology, we try to incorporate as much as possible,” said Siwek.
Some parents were impressed not only by their children and their achievements, but with Siwek’s teaching. Shawn Westmeister, father of fourth grader Maci, is impressed and would like to see more technology incorporated in eary childhood education.
“This is really helping in prepping them for junior high and high school. This is the type of advancements and training that I feel we need to see more of. This is setting kids on the right path to have skills, be self motivators and embrace new technology,” said Westmeister.
Fourth grader TJ Morgan did his project on Indiana. “My favorite part was when my teacher turned on music and we all worked on the posters together,” he said.
