One Strategy for Research Notes

When I went to elementary school, I learnt how to write research notes. There was all this bibliography stuff you had to write down for each book you took your notes from, you weren't allowed to copy the words directly from the book and you had to rewrite it all in your own words. My notes would be on multiple pieces of paper and I never could really find the piece of paper I wanted when it came to writing my reports. None of that has really changed, just where we keep track of our notes.

For most, it's no surprise we first turn to Google for our research. With all of the scholarly articles online, websites and ebooks, there isn't as much need to go into a library, dust off an old encyclopaedia and crack it open to the page you are looking for. Where we look for our materials has changed and so has how we record our notes.

For our current unit about ecosystems, where essentially my students were doing a massive research project to gather the information they needed to successfully create an online course for other students, it was evident from the start that research notes was most definitely going to be an important skill to teach.

After we had decided on lesson topics, the students brainstormed all of the questions they could think of initially in one Google Document.

From there, they created and linked a separate Google Doc for each topic. This would help them go back and build their levels based on the different topics selected. The students pasted their questions into the document. As they found information that fit a particular question, they were able to make notes on the topic. Often they chose to research by theme but at times students could jump from one page to the next easily without losing any of their notes. 

For their bibliography, they pasted the links into the bottom of each page. We talked a lot about what plagiarism was and how to avoid it by changing it into their own word right from the moment they create their research notes. As Year 5 students, I didn't have them create full bibliographies as they took down their research notes just yet but it was a start in the right direction. 

This of course is just one strategy that could help students organise their notes when researching for a project but by no means the only way. I had different groups record their notes using different methods but it was another tool to add to their repertoire. 

Survival Provocation: Learning Concepts Through Games

I love mixing it up in the classroom (and taking it outside of it too). No day of learning should ever be the same - it's one of the great things about teaching. Each time we begin a new unit, we try to tackle it from a new approach.

For our new ecosystems unit, we wanted to get our students thinking about the topic in an active way. The game survival is a fun and energetic game that instantly gets the students thinking about food webs, energy sources and strategising to survive.

The game is simple - stay alive. Each student is given a card to represent a different part of the food chain. They are herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, human or disease. The most powerful is the disease who can attack any of the players below, humans can eat omnivore, carnivores, herbivores and so forth down the food chain. There are a limited number of players who begin as disease and human.

Players will run around the game space. In our case, we used the basketball court and set up various obstacles and hiding places around it. Energy and food cards were hidden around the playing field that players could collect. If someone from higher up on the food chain catches you, you must give them one of your energy or food cards. If you have no energy or food cards left, you are out of the game.

This activity prompted a lot of great discussion following the game about what ecosystems actually are and how they work. We discussed why it was more difficult for some to stay alive compared to other players.  In addition, the students generated some excellent ideas for how to change the game as well such as:
- having an antidote for the disease so you can come back alive/ regain energy cards
- adding additional players at any level to create an imbalance in the ecosystem
- herbivores that are poisonous as a way of self-defence
- changing the actual ecosystem the game was played in
- students taking on specific animals within the game

We will play this game a few additional times throughout our unit using variations and hope to incorporate other active games to engage our learners.

New Unit, New Approach

It's an idea I've been toying with a while now - students creating their own unit from start to finish. I had a friend who had tried this to a certain extent but I wondered if I could push it further. This lead to the idea of students creating online courses, which their peers or other people could take. Would this be possible? Even more so, would this be possible with a 6-week unit? 

Online learning is becoming more and more popular in the 21st-century world of learning. One of the biggest draws is it's convenience - you do do it any place, any time providing you have an internet connection. But does it have any place in the elementary classroom? 

I was curious to know if I could really give my 9-year-old students the responsibility of creating a unit from start to finish as well as creating it as online content. I started to draft a flow chart of what I would need to do and came up with the following. 

When I introduced the concept to my students, the response I got was "Are we really going to be able to do all that?" followed up excitement that they were going to actually build a course. I think what really got them hooked as well is that I told them no other class was going to be doing in the school and we were going to be trialling this idea out. There was a sense of pride that they had been 'chosen' for such a task.

Honestly, I had no idea how I really going to do this when I first started brainstorming and still have no idea if it will really end up working like I hope it will but I've jumped in and so have my kids. I'll be documenting the whole process as I go and I'm sure my plans will be changing frequently in order to cater to my students. It's going to be a wild next 5 weeks.