Putnam County 4th graders use earthquake as learning tool

Putnam County Primary School fourth grade teacher Amy Olson has been teaching for 32 years and she knows when students enter her classroom excited about a topic, that’s an opportunity.

Wednesday morning, her fourth graders showed up sharing their stories about an 3.6 magnitude earthquake that centered around the village of Standard at 4:41 a.m., but was felt throughout the Illinois Valley region.

[ Here's why Putnam County had a 3.6 magnitude earthquake ]

The original plan was to tackle two-digit by two-digit multiplication, but Wednesday would be the most captivated class she’d have to introduce them to bar graphs.

Within a half hour of class time, Olson had armed her students with clipboards and they were sent off to visit the other classrooms in the building and record those students’ and staff members’ experiences.

“They asked how many students felt the earthquake and how many didn’t,” said Olson, who is in her second year teaching at Putnam County. “They took that data and made bar graphs with it. Then for the students who felt the earthquake, my students asked them what they felt and recorded that information.”

Olson said the classroom made the bar graphs on Google sheets, then wrote summaries with the additional information.

After the data was collected, Olson talked about the science behind earthquakes and students looked at a map of the epicenter, which happened to be in the heart of Putnam County. Students heard stories ranging from some who didn’t feel anything to one saying they fell out of bed from the shaking.

“They were very excited,” Olson said. “This is the first time we’ve talked about earthquakes or bar graphs. I thought we might as well take advantage of that excitement.”

Olson said she is proud of how the students responded and said these are the memorable days in the classroom.

“It was time well spent,” Olson said. “That’s for sure.”