The Oregon Trail is a classic cultural studies topic in fourth and fifth grade. If you grew up in the United States, it’s likely that you too traveled the trail with your classmates. If you’re like me, you remember switching out five-inch floppy disks to play the classic Oregon Trail video game on MS-DOS. Try your luck. Can you make it to Oregon?

But what’s it really about than the history of white folks moving across the prairie? Here’s a list:

• collaborating with a small group to make critical decisions along the trail. How will you treat the snake bite? Better do some research? How will you purify that water so you don’t get cholera? Better research that, too. What if we don’t get along and can’t make any decisions? You lose time points and won’t reach Oregon before the snow begins falling. You’ll likely freeze or starve or both. Think Donner Party.
• Crafting hand-made journals and writing from the perspective of a created character living in a faraway time and place. Using cursive to describe the remote bluffs, crowded campgrounds, and close encounters with Native people who were sick and tired of people taking their land.
• Looking at the expansion of the United States and the tension building toward the Civil War as new states had to decide whether or not to allow slavery.
• Examining primary source documents to make inferences about life in the middle 1800s.
• Going deeper into the question of “Why do people move,” which has been the foundational, essential, guiding question of our work this year. America is a land of immigrants, movers, and displaced people. The more we understand that, the less xenophobic I hope we will be.

Have a beautiful evening.

Homework

Reading: the usual. Long and strong. 20 minutes at least.

Quizlet for studying spelling words.

Poetry: check out the Google Classroom assignment at classroom.google.com. Find the poetic devices in Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish.”

Math

• 4th grade:5 division problems
• 5th grade page 34 and finish the geoboard area problems.  Square Up!!! is still here if you want to master it.
• Here’s a really hard extension for eager mathematicians.

No Oregon Trail video game until you finish all the other stuff, but if your screen time allowances permit, enjoy!