Authentic Audience for 4th Grade Writing

Taxes! Load the musket! Tea party! King George! The British are coming!

Our fourth graders learned about the American Revolutionary War as a part of the new writing curriculum in third quarter. Our students were required to research the causes of the war and pick an event to write about.

Writing is a lot more fun if you have an audience to write for, so we decided to ask third graders to listen to our final research papers as we read them aloud, and to discuss what life was like back in the 1770’s.

On Wednesday, March 25, the fourth graders paired up and presented to small groups of third grade students. A discussion of the war and colonial life followed the presentations. Here are some of the reactions from both third and fourth graders.

“It was fun! I liked when the students were listening” - Juan

“I loved it because I was able to learn about the Revolutionary War and the Boston Tea Party” -Jordan and Izzy

“Isabel asked how we learned all about the Revolutionary War and we told her books and the web”-Talia

“The kids asked a lot of very good questions and I liked answering”-Gretchen

“I was shocked to learn what the Revolutionary War was like” –Hailey

“My favorite part about reading to the third graders was that they were interested the whole time”-Brantley

“It was awesome because we learned facts.”- Cristian

“They were paying attention and asking questions. They liked the Boston Tea Party”-Ana

“I liked talking to the 4^th graders.”- Akshay

“The third graders asked what the Battle of Yorktown was”-Hana

“We talked about how I was in third grade”-Kam (O.K., so it was not all academic!)