Dinosaurs, curriculum and accountability ;-)
Patti Weeg
Some of my second grade Title 1 students sent messages about dinosaurs and
some also drew pictures for the Bridges WWWBoard. It is my job to support
the math, reading and writing lessons that take place in their regular
classrooms. The kids come to my lab for about 1/2 hour each day and use
Jostens software on my network. We also make good use of the writing
processor that comes with Jostens. One of my second grade classes is
talking about dinosaurs in their homeroom so when I saw Sonnie's picture
that gave me an idea for including my little ones.
http://www.kidlink.org/KIDPROJ/Bridges/wwwboard/messages/550.html
Here is a quick summary of how I took this topic and used it with my kids.
Grade level: 2nd grade Title 1 students
Objectives: main idea and details, global collaboration, letter writing,
map skills
Duration: at least 5 days in the lab (about 25 minute lessons)
Materials: word processing software (Notepad is fine), Paintbrush (Windows
3.1)
6 books on dinosaurs - one for each student, graphic organizer for
main idea and details, Internet access on at least one computer
Procedure:
1. We looked at the Bridges WWWBoard and saw Sonnie's dinosaur picture.
2. Sonnie is an old friend in Japan. We went right to the map and pointed
out where he lives - Japan. My kids know that when we are awake at
school, Sonnie is sleeping in Japan.
3. I gave each of my students a library book from our school library
about
dinosaurs.
4. I gave each student a graphic organizer for main idea and detail and
we
reviewed the meaning of main idea and details.
5. Our main idea was: "Dinosaurs are amazing."
6. The kids looked through the dinosaur books and searched for details that
support their main idea.
7. The kids wrote their main idea and details on their graphic organizer.
8. The kids used their graphic organizer to compose a letter to Sonnie
telling him that dinosaurs are amazing.
9. One group of second graders (I have several groups) was able to spend
some time making their own dinosaur picture for Sonnie after they
wrote
their text. These are on the Bridges WWWBoard.
Still ahead:
1. Lesson on TIME. I have 2 clock faces on a sheet of paper. The kids can
make one clock show our time in Maryland and the other clock show the time
(14 hours ahead) in Japan.
In KIDPROJ we have a super set of clocks for you if your browser supports
java:
http://www.kidlink.org/KIDPROJ/test/dualclock.html
I love it. Many thanks to Grant Dougall for this great resource.
2. Assessment - How can I assess what the kids did? One way is to create a
rubric with the kids before hand and have them assess their work when they
are finished. They might get one point for each item:
* Did they include their main idea?
* Did they give at least 2 details?
* Did they use proper letter form? (The WWWBoard justifies
everything to
the left but I have their original text files.)
* Did they use capital letters to start a sentence? etc...
* Did they spell correctly?
I'll stop here because this is much too long for e-mail. It is my hope
that we can begin to share these kinds of ideas with each other. The more
we share, the richer we all will be. ;-) Many of our schools are now
wired and we all know what the next step will be - accountability! How
are we using these expensive machines to enhance learning?
All the best,
Patti
---------------- Patti Weeg ------------------
Kids@work: Math in the Cyberzone
http://www.beaumont-publishing.co.uk/books/cybermath2
mailto:pw...@beaumont-publishing.co.uk
The Global Classroom http://www.globalclassroom.org
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