I usually see 4th grade in halves--12 kids at a time. I am no doubt spoiled.
Today I had all of 4th grade at one time, and two other teachers. It was still a lot more than I'm used to, and I'm still no doubt spoiled.
We are working on an animal project. This is a slight update of something 4th grade has been doing for quite some time.
The programs included are using a wiki as a class homepage, using various teacher posted web sites for information, using askkids.com for searches, using inspiration for information organization, and ultimately creating a glogster. Students will then be doing a writing assignment about their animal.
Today was the fist day in the lab. We had all 24 kids together. I wanted to talk to them about using the web sites, doing a search on askkids, and how to use wikipedia. The 4th grade teacher and I discussed breaking them into two groups and going over the info twice, but I thought it might take 20-30 minutes to get all the info across, and that would mean 10 or less minutes for immediate application. It seemed better practice to have the full group, go through the set up, and give everyone a half hour to immediately apply.
As anticipated, it took a good 5-10 minutes to get all the students situated in new seats (had to assign seats) and logged in (they frequently rely on auto complete and take much longer to get signed in once new seats are assigned--this group are fantastic at keeping track of passwords, and just not as good at user names).
I used the same wiki that we use in class. I had students read the directions for today. I showed them where the useful sites were. After that we talked about Wikipedia. A lot of teachers are very gun shy with Wikipedia, but so far no one in this building is unwilling to use it. So, I had the kids discuss the benefits of letting anyone edit that site, and why it can cause problems. And, with some guidance, they were able to come up with why you can use Wikipedia, but you have to double check the information (that policy seems very standard to most teachers here).
Student wrote down their findings on a printed out diagram of an inspiration mind map--to be transferred to inspiration later. My original instinct was to propose just jumping into inspiration from the get go first, creating maps, and then filling them from web research. Fortunately, the 4th grade teacher made the comment that this way students could have one thing at a time. I think a lot of 4th graders are good at multitasking, but some are not used to doing it on a computer. And with so many new things going on--and having to balance web research and book research, and using multiple websites at one time--I think it probably is for the best that they do all research first, then move on to recording and organizing their information.
Things went really well. As research went on, I could tell by the questions what information was hard to find and started finding and providing addition "useful sites." And, students started suggesting them as well. I think they like the idea of being able to suggest sites.
Some students are having less luck than others (chinchilla) finding information, and information on baby animals is being less than easy to come by.
The biggest issue was that I overlooked telling students that the top links in blue were adds. Unfortunately, this was a result of being so entrenched in searching myself, some part of my brain doesn't even so those links. I suddenly saw a few students on target and was befuddled as to why for a few seconds. At that point, most students were using the useful links and not askkids, so I decided, instead of breaking the flow of the class, to make a point of explaining that at the beginning of next class.
I think this project started strong. I'm pleased with the progress, and I think the other teachers are as well. I'm excited to jump into inspiration and glogster soon.
Useful sites: NatGeo Kids, Yahoo Kids, San Fransisco Zoo, San Diego Zoo, Discovery, Sea World, Discovery
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