Fourth Graders Practice Being Good Digital Citizens While Sharing Information on Earth's Forces

The research projects are occurring at a rapid pace these days. The fourth graders are learning about Earth's Forces. My role in this project was to remind them about the resources available on our library web page, including those resources with images. We subscribe to Britannica ImageQuest, which has millions of user-friendly images, and is really the only one we need, but the students do also use the user-friendly images in Encyclopedia Britannica as well as those from the research tools in Google Apps for Education.

My other job was to introduce Google Slides. I talked about what a Google Slide presentation should look like and how a slide presentation should be talking points and not text to read word for word. The students and I then created sample slides. We practiced bringing in images that reinforced the information we had added to the slide and then citing those images. Each classroom contributed a slide. 

I walked through the process for accessing Britannica ImageQuest, search for images, finding one that reinforced the information on the slide, finding the citation, inserting the image and then linking the citation to the image itself and the bibliography slide. 

I did the same for Google Tools.

For the information on the slide, we used knowledge from the class. Here's a look at what we created:

Ethical Gatherers of Information

This is how both my library and the fifth grade classrooms have looked for the past week. The fifth graders are busy gathering information on Native American peoples from across the United States. One of my roles has been to introduce the templates for both note taking and citing sources. I very much enjoy talking with students about these two things and it's been reaffirming to watch them apply their new skills.

This project is not only collaboratively taught, it is also collaboratively planned and developed. I am honored to work with a team that values my input and my role in teaching and learning and I am grateful for the understanding and knowledge I have gained from them.

I modeled how to find the Google Docs Templates that the fifth grade teachers shared. I modeled how to make a copy of a template and rename it. I modeled accessing and navigating to the library resources like PebbleGo Next and Encyclopedia Britannica. I modeled how to cite a source and take notes using the templates. 

And then it was the students turn...

First Grade Information Gatherers

My first graders are learning about research by gathering information - the "do" stage of the Super 3 research process, Plan, Do, Review. Here's what first grade information gatherers look like:

After gathering information, the students were invited to add their own wondering questions and to try to answer those. Here are some of their wondering questions:

Bess Beetle

Why are they black?

What is the life cycle?

Why do they eat meat?

Why do they eat smaller bugs?

Millipede

What are its predators?

How many legs?

What is their habitat?

I wonder if they have 750 legs?

Do centipedes and millipedes eat the same thing?

How many legs?

How fast?

How many eggs do they lay?

Tenebrio Beetle

Why can it not live in Antarctica?

Why does it have stripes?

Why cant they live in Antarctica?

Pill Bug

How long do pill bugs live?

How many body parts?

Do they walk fast?

Do they eat other pill bugs?

Do they eat flowers?

How slow do they walk?

Crickets

What does a cricket do when they are mad?

What is a cricket’s life cycle?

What do they do in the day?

How do they fly?

Why do crickets have to be black and brown?