Session 6 Reflections

Having time to work on our project is really helpful... Big6 is in our brains, and if we have questions, the flesh-n-blood references are right there. Besides, Sally and I probably wouldn't have (or make) the time outside the school day to get this much planning done! :D

Critically thinking about websites at 4th grade shouldn't be too hard if we keep it in perspective... because even if they leave 4th grade aware of the fact that not everything on the web is "good" to use for research and that they should doubt the source unless there's a good reason to trust it.... then we've done our part of their K-12 technology curriculum.

Session 5 Reflections

Search Strategies: indexes, Boolean searches, limiters.

Best thing learned: site limiters i.e. site:edu or site:gov etc. to limit results

It's a tired Monday afternoon... so there's not a lot of excess energy left for reflection.

Making a wiki in class was good for everyone to see how easy it is.

My own classroom wikispaces project is moving along nicely. Go see!

Session 4 Reflections

MARVEL is MARVELOUS! Google has been circular-filed. Any searches the kiddos will be doing will be going through MARVEL. It's amazing how much information (already categorized) is out there. (Does this spell an eventual phazing out of librarians/media specialists?? just kidding, Connie)

As for blogging?? hmmm... I've never been much of a journaler, so this wouldn't be done outside of class (for me at least)... but it serves as a good tool for our colleagues to see what we're all thinking, asking questions we might not think of in class, hear feedback from our excellent instructors without taking up too much class time.

I'll probably look up the wiki thing on my own, because I'm working on a class-created story... it would be keen for the kids to be able to add to it whenever/wherever the fancy struck them. Then we could also pass the finished version's link to whomever we'd like to read it. Hmmm... more thoughts on this later.

Session 3 comments

LOTS AND LOTS DONE! Sally and I got a much better grip on the Why Maine? unit. The table activity let us plan out the subtopics the student groups will research to meet the progress report benchmarks. We also thought of some possible presentation formats the students could opt for.

The online rubric makers are AWESOME!! We'll definitely get a lot out of those.

Also need to remember that we're teaching the Big6 process and vocabulary to the students... because hopefully they'll be seeing it after they move on.

CLASS BLOG

Class 2: Big6 Task Definition (especially the essential questions) refocused Sally and I to structure the rest of the year around our Maine/government studies. The important thing we need to remember is to not do the thinking for the students. Stepping back far enough leads you to the essential questions; keeping one finger on the progress report benchmarks tells you if your essential question(s) will lead you in the right direction.

So here's the task for us 4th grade teachers at Kaler: How do we cover the following Social Studies progress report benchmarks while still letting the students decide what's important to study and then present it in a way that's both meaningful and authentic?
- Social Studies Benchmarks:
-> Understands the function of government (Maine focus)
-> Demonstrates an understanding of major events and people (in Maine)
-> Compares current and historical life (Maine focus)
-> Can label and identify specific features of a map (Maine focus)
-> Explains how the economy (of Maine) affects families and communities

The following is a rough draft of an idea:
WHY MAINE?
Students need to develop a presentation that would convince businesses, residents, and/or vacationers to visit/move to Maine.

This is a big task to define, with many parts, but we should be able to walk along with them to define the parts, help them decide on presentation formats, and create a rubric to score each piece.

Verification

Jason's blog is active!

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