There are really three places the Rust family finds the focus and time to really talk:
- Walking Millie dog around our neighborhood. (See above for proof.)
- Those rare nights of “everyone is around the dinner table at the same time.”
- Our Honda Odyssey mini van during our delightful commutes from Reservoir Brandon to all the SA campuses.
Sometimes a kid plays DJ and we share songs we like with each other. Other times we play “roses/thorns” or some version of the game to talk about our days. But you can usually count on one thing: Alianna has the most to say out of all of us. All year she has been regaling us with stories of the joy of social studies, and Zander and Lucy have eagerly jumped in to either say “we did the exact same thing in 4th grade!” or “no fair; I don’t remember doing that!”
I had to learn more, so I sat down briefly with the Anna Frame last week to finalize a list of TOP TEN FOURTH GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES HITS!
10. Start class with something fun and low-key to connect to students’ lives.
Whether it’s talk about Taylor Swift, a sports event, or showing the class pictures from when they were in PK3 at St. Andrew’s, Anna knows that a short attention getting “off topic” activity is rarely a waste of time. Why? Anna explained: “Ithe more you get to know kids and what they do in their personal life and anytime you can randomly connect . . . any time you can be like “I know you. I know what you are about,” I feel like it really helps.”
9. Bring content to life with debate & role play.
An Anna Frame Classic: Every year for lots of years, Anna engages her fourth graders in a heated debate-role-play experience to explore the American Revolution: Patriots v. Loyalists-style. After assigning students a historical figure on either side, they are each asked to become an expert and then argue from that person’s point of view. Some of her most-treasured memories of this debate experience were when she used to coordinate with Darin to bring down debate students to help judge. Interestingly, her favorite moments come, not out of the debates themselves, but the team huddles between rounds: “they are so engaged; so competitive; so intense!”
8. Have students show what they know with thought bubbles on images.
A newer addition to her repertoire, students have a blast working together to create these comic-strip style thought bubbles on the same image of famous historical figures. Fourth graders benefitted from the scaffold of “you must mention these five things” as well as the creative opportunity to incorporate their voice into the content. The best part according to Alianna? “I got partnered up with someone who actually does their work!”
7. Stop teaching and start storytelling!
This one is a bit more abstract, but it’s at the heart at the best of history teaching. Alianna has said often that she retains so much from class NOT from the textbook, but from an Anna Frame retelling: “Instead of reading straight out of the book, sometimes she gets up and entertains us by telling the story of it. The words on the page are kind of more boring than telling it in her own voice.”
6. Tug and war your way into learning?
Anna is quick to say that this idea came from a textbook, but it was essentially this genius way to demonstrate the American Revolution. You first ask four of the biggest kids in the class (aka the British at the beginning) to face off against four of the smallest (the Colonists). Slowly, you incorporate more members to each side and the odds of the US gaining independence skyrocket. It was an incredibly effective metaphor, but after too many years of children getting too upset at the injustice Anna wisely decided to retire the analogy.
5. Encourage students to do corrections!
Corrections?! FUN?! I know this is a crazy one to include, but it’s a Momma Top Ten Hit, even if it may not be Alianna’s. Check out this amazing little template Anna uses to ensure that students take the time to review what they missed and incorporate the text evidence to show how they know what the right answer is after all. Some kids need an extra push to do the work and return to the text. If she can get our students into that habit in fourth grade, I can’t wait to see their scholarly habits by the time they reach senior English!
- Beyond note-taking: Incorporate comics to make sense of the text!
Fourth graders are still fairly early on the journey of “reading to learn,” so they can use any help they can get to help them make sense of the text. Anna creates fun fill-in-the blank study guide comics that incorporate images and captions to level up her fourth graders’ comprehension and study habits.
3. Prank the children for memorable impact by giving them wrong information and watch them lose their mind but then never forget what they learned from the ordeal.
I hate pranks so much that last week when Dr. Foley asked me to switch classrooms with him on April 2nd for a quick “let’s pretend we are teaching the wrong block” I crumbled within 30 seconds and shouted to the class “It’s a prank! It’s an April Fool’s Prank! I can’t keep this up!” However, Anna Frame (and Jim Foley) do MUCH better sustaining pranks for the good of everyone. In one case, Anna emphasized that our founding fathers voted to approve the Declaration of Independence on July 2nd. She goes on to say “that’s why every year we celebrate the 2nd of July. . . you know with fireworks, etc.” Every year, a few nod and don’t catch it and a few begin to object. Anna stands strong with impressive gaslighting skills. Finally, someone reads ahead in the textbook to verify: IT WAS JULY 4th! Kids love being right, but even more so: they love it when we, founts of teacherly expertise, are WRONG.
2. Prank the children (again) but this time to provoke empathy and historical understanding.
Alianna came home talking and talking about this one. (Anna uses her resources and credits her sources, so she wants you to know this idea also came from the textbook, but I credit the success of implementation entirely to her.) It was around Valentine’s Day and Anna started class with “this is random and has nothing to do with what we are learning, but SAPA just had a meeting and since this is your last Valentine’s day party at lower school, they want you to go ahead and plan it for fourth grade.” She split them into small groups and they spent 15 very focused minutes planning all the elements of party: what to eat, what to do, etc. Then she interrupted the buzz of activity with a fake “uh oh . . . I just checked my email and SAPA actually has about ten very limiting rules they are imposing on these parties at the very last minute.” After groans were emitted, she snaps them out of it: “I want you to harness these feelings and the injustice boiling in your body; this is exactly what happened with the colonists and Great Britain.” Side-note: she did actually pass along the ideas to SAPA and it turns out our fourth graders are fairly adept and creative party planners.
- Incorporate song and dance!
This is THE TOP ANNA FRAME HIT (get it . . . it’s a hit and it’s about songs?), at least in the Rust household. All year Lucy and Zander had been asking Alianna “have you learned the song/dance thing from Mrs. Frame yet?” Finally, the day came. We swung by to pick up Alianna from after school care and she ran into the van screaming: “I LEARNED THE TENSION DANCE!” This is an Anna Frame original, and it came out of a lesson entitled “Tensions Grown Between the Colonies and Great Britain.” Anna explains “Years ago as I was teaching it I realized it was a lot of information and you needed to know the order of events for, and randomly I was like ‘I’m gonna make it a song’; on the fly in class I made it up. The best part is over the years kids have added little details to it, such as the amazing line: “rallied Mohawks bring out your axes!” I tell them ‘I’m not gonna force you to sing and dance, but there have been studies about connecting motions to learning.’ I also say ‘during the test if you get stumped you can come ask me a question but I might do a hand motion like this’ People every year ask to go in the hall to do the dance while they are taking the test.
I am of two minds about fun. I recognize and know that not all the things in life are going to be fun, so school shouldn’t always be a circus either. Sometimes we’ve got to learn to buckle down and do the really hard, boring things, and when we are lucky, the hard, boring things magically transform into something deeply fulfilling and (dare I say) fun in the end.
But also, life is short, and childhood is even shorter. We spend so very many of our hours in school settings. Nearly all of my most memorable experiences in life have had an element of fun to them. And if we as teachers aren’t enjoying our work with our students, what are we doing wasting our time in this profession anyway? We humans, young and old alike, are wired for play. And the great news is I see your recognition of this truth in, not just Anna’s class, but nearly every class I observe at our school. So as we settle in for a final month of learning and begin and living together, let’s (re)commit to serving up all the rigor with a side of joy.