Final Project - C&I
335
Teaching Research Skills
Using Technology
Margie Adkins
This site is
under construction
Introduction
Current
Progress
Obstacles
Evaluation
Continuation
of Project
Introduction
Because this is an ongoing
project that will continue throughout the school year, I can only report
the progress that has been made to date. The plans and timeline for
this project can be found in my Project
Proposal.
Current
Progress
To date, I have completed
the following with my class:
Research Indian Tribes
-
Teach note taking skills
using factual articles on the overhead projector and a handout showing
a sample notecard and giving notecard requirements.
-
Assign each student a
different tribe to research by drawing names and allowing students to choose
a tribe.
-
Give students these 6
questions to answer about their tribe.
-
What foods did your tribe
eat?
-
What kind of clothes did
your tribe wear?
-
What did your tribe use
for shelter?
-
What tools or weapons
did your tribe use?
-
What crafts did your tribe
have?
-
What ceremonies or festivals
did your tribe have?
-
Show students how to find
the names of sources in all types of media. (This one has not been completed
to my satisfaction. See Obstacles below.)
-
Rotate groups of students
through various stations, including:
-
computers with appropriate
CDs
-
reference books
-
books on Indians
-
other resources
-
The product will be simple
murals created in groups. Each mural will focus on the tribes from
a certain region. Students will draw pictures of the information
they found in each of the 6 categories in their research. These
pictures can be organized by category or by tribe, depending on the amount
of overlap. Each mural must contain the following:
-
Name of the region
-
Name of each tribe represented
-
Each student's name by his/her portion of the
mural
-
Accurate representations of the information
from each of the 6 categories researched.
-
Assessment is made by
assigning grades to students' notecards and their individual work on their
mural. Grades will be assigned using rubrics.
Obstacles
Encountered
In addition to the obstacles
that I expected (see Project
Proposal), I have had to deal with the following:
-
8 students who are severe
behavior problems. To date I've been forced to write approximately
20 referrals, I've had students who have had to serve 5 out-of-school suspensions
lasting from 1 to 10 days and numerous in-house suspensions. All
these interruptions in instructional time has put my class far behind where
we should be in learning the curriculum.
-
A complete hard drive
crash of my computer. This took the district a couple of weeks to
get fixed. After getting my computer back, it took several days for
me to finally succeed in getting it hooked back up to the internet. All
this occurred right at the time that my students were doing the research
for their projects, so I had to modify my stations from the original proposal,
omitting the internet.
-
An inability to locate
an AV compatible computer that I could hook up to my TV screen in order
to teach students how to cite internet and CD sources, and an inability
to get my recently repaired computer to print so that I could make a hand
out showing a web page and how to cite it.
Evaluation
of Current Progress
Overall, the work that
the students have done on researching and taking notes has been good.
They were able to follow the format given them, find the information they
needed, and take good notes omitting unnecessary information, but they
need more work on how to cite sources. The murals created as a product
for this project varied greatly in quality, depending on student effort.
Plans
for Continuation of the Project
I hope to have my computer
working properly by the time my students get to the second research project
of the year, which is on explorers. At that time I will add the information
on the internet back into my project plan and continue on with the project
as presented in my proposal, modifying the timeline in order to complete
the project by the end of the school year.
As my class completes
their different projects, I plan to include their products on this webpage.
Back to my Portfolio