The last few weeks in 3rd grade, we have been working on a research project about fire. This has been a major learning experience for the students, as this is the first time they have been using technology as the main tool for completing research.
To start, we introduced some essential questions that would help to guide our research:
Why is fire important?
How do humans use fire?
How does fire impact our world?
Where does fire come from?
After being exposed to these "trunk" questions, the students had the opportunity to think about and brainstorm some "branch" questions. This means they thought about other questions related to fire that they were curious about and could look for answers to on their own. The inquiry into fire as a topic was initiated by adults, however the path of the inquiry into fire developed and was executed by and based on student interest and curiosity.
With the essential questions in mind, students started exploring curated articles from the resource site Newsela. Newsela is an excellent age-appropriate resource for students to work with as it takes articles from other publications and adapts them to an accessible reading level, using developmentally appropriate sentence structure and vocabulary for independent reading. Newsela also allows the students to listen to an article while they follow along with the text. This could allow them to access an article at a higher level than they would be able to decode for themselves.
In order to document notes from their reading, students were also introduced to Google Classroom and Google Docs as a way to keep track of what they had learned. Mrs. Neuroth created an assignment on Google Classroom that had a template for a note taking sheet that the students could use. While they read, students thought about what information they would want to know for later. We introduced them to copying and pasting the information, which blew their minds. Once they had the notes pasted in, it was time to work on putting that information into their own words. We introduced and discussed the importance of citing sources, and giving original author’s credit for their work.
Over the past few months, the students have been introduced to utilizing kid-friendly search engines and keywords to yield the best possible results. Check out a slide show of the strategies we introduced in this slide show. Students applied this knowledge to expanding their research outside of Newsela articles. Through mini-lessons and workshop time, the third graders were introduced to how to evaluate websites for credibility and reliability based on the type of site, content, and author. Students applied these strategies when searching for answers to the questions they generated throughout their previous research using Newsela.
The third graders have now decided who they want to share their learning with (audience) and how they will share (presentation medium). Students will not only share information they learned about fire, but also about the research process itself. The integration of inquiry, research, and technology integration has made this unit challenging and rewarding for both students and teachers. We can’t wait to see what the students put together to share their presentations of learning.