Do You Know Your American History?

My 4th grade classes have been working on a migration unit. For their final assessment they had to select a guiding question and then develop a plan of research. Two boys (neither of whom are American) chose the guiding question "Why do people move?" and chose the subject of pioneers moving west in the US.

A few disclaimers:

*A lot of the grammar/verb tense irregularities are very typical for this age as so many kids are bilingual or trilingual in our school.

*This was their first draft--however, they were quite disappointed at our (teacher) response...


People move because of bad weather and robbers. Less trees global warming. And they had troubles light lightings and buffalos charging into their wagons wheels falling off of their wagons their horses ran away sometimes the horses also can get hurt and injured. What they had to bring food,medicine, weapons, powder and sugar and coffee (such as rifles) and sometimes there are Indians stopping you so you will have to pay the money!

If there was bad weather and it would rain and the people will have to use an umbrella and block the rain drops. The pilgrims will have to shoot the buffalos a lot of times to kill it and the Indians had arrows and one shot will kill it buffalos are hard to kill. The Indians made spears and bows and arrows and tubes where you could put a spike inside and it will poison the enemies. The pilgrims had rifles and knifes. Every night there will be a guard to guard the camp and if he fell asleep he would get spanked and hurt. If there were no camp fire wood you could use buffalo poohs. Sometimes they would have bugs go inside their food. Sometimes there won’t be space for you to sit the people would sell their house because they had to move away quickly and buy supplies for the journey. The journeys are very difficult. The people who move on the prairies go to places called forts where they can buy supplies if they run out of them. If you get stuck on the prairie or get lost in one, you should wait until another cart or traveler comes and travels with you. If your animal pulls your cart collapse or dies, you should bandage the wound with part of your shirt to stop the wound from getting infected. Some animals needs lots of care and drinks. If you run out give most of your water you have left to your animals.


Impressive--they managed to work in global warming and references to African bushmen. Not to mention corporal abuse and umbrellas! When we were done giggling, we handed it back and strongly suggested they read the books instead of just looking at pictures and filling in the gaps. The second attempt was much better, although it did tend to focus mainly on the tremendous dangers of river crossings for some reason.


By the way, I am all for reforming the educational system, but I better not have my merit pay judged by this...