Fourth Grade Impact
In fourth grade, students continue to do weekly drawing lessons from the dcir.org website. The lessons are cross curricular and tie into what the teacher is already teaching in class. These lessons build visual communication skills and add to their ability to create meaningful hands on projects in class, retain information and helps them to understand more complex subjects because they hear about it, watch a hand draw the illustration as their own hand mirrors the actions. From having the DCIR program for the past two years, these students have learned to be self directed and self regulated. They sharpen their own pencils with personal sharpeners as to not disturb the class. They can hear their thoughts because our "Enjoy the Writing" journal writing is done in a quiet classroom for 1 hour each week. These students erase mistakes, revise outlines, expand plots and share their writing.
Fourth Grade Drawings
Fourth Graders With Their Drawings
Fourth Grade Daily Writing Practice Samples
“I think that one of the most powerful aspects of DCIR this year in my classroom has been the journaling. When we started journaling last year, we'd try to write for 10 minutes. During that time, I would constantly be stooping down to students' desks, feeding them prompts, trying to get them to tap into their imagination, trying to get something started. While a few would happily write and seem to have endless ideas, many would get stuck and see no way to proceed. I would be lucky to see even 3 - 4 sentences from a few stubborn writers. Now, it is one of the activities that my students look forward to the most, and the students that struggled through a few sentences last year are now consistently writing for 15 - 20 minutes, quite easily filling a page with their own ideas. I've seen the quality of writing improve, handwriting improve, and most importantly, confidence. Twice a week I ask for volunteers to read what they've been working on to the class, and nearly every hand shoots into the air as students eagerly await their turn to share their stories. This level of confidence and willingness to read their own stories to the class is beautiful, and I have DCIR to thank for that.”
~ Luke Dennison, 4th Grade Teacher
