For Social Studies, Mrs. Jorzak’s fourth grade class has begun a study of the regions of the United States. Recently, we completed our adventure in the Middle West region of the United States. This region is divided into two major sections, the Great Lakes area and the Plains area. Several states are included in this vast region. For a conclusion to this study, instead of a traditional test, we completed projects that allowed students to utilize their talents and strengths to share with the class.

This activity was student led, so a limited amount of class time was consumed in the achievement of the projects. Each student was given an opportunity to present his or her finished vision on February 23^rd . Every student was to choose two projects, one for each area in the Middle West region. The idea behind this activity was to allow for student options, creativity, and continual acquirement of knowledge. Each project choice involved a new untapped opportunity for student growth by investigating ideas that had not been presented previously in class, while keeping with the same overall main topic of the Middle West. 

There were 16 different choices for the projects some of the options included making a chart of the five Great Lakes including their size and the meaning of the names, making a collage of the automobiles that are made in the region, recreating the flags of the region and describing the symbols on each, finding a recipe that uses corn as an ingredient and prepare it for the class, research the use of sunflowers and construct a model, construct a model of the Gateway Arch with an explanation of why it is the "Gateway to the West", find out what causes tornadoes and create a poster with safety tips/ information of why the Plains have so many, and select a passage from Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls and act out it out with a buddy. These options that I mentioned also happened to be the most popular.

As each student presented, they included an explosion of new information for us to take in, along with an explanation as to why they chose that particular project. Every student in the class did a fantastic job completing this activity. We all enjoyed watching and learning as the presentations occurred. The class is looking forward to the next set of projects.