Final Post

On Thursday I delivered my project to my classroom.  Oh my goodness did I not leave enough time for my students to work on their work.  It took longer than I excepted to show them an example and discuss what we are looking for, for the state report that they are doing.  Then to have them independently look for the information took a lot longer.  I had only anticipated 45 minutes for the whole project.   It took us 2 days at 60 minutes each to do this.  I think that this was something that I needed to break into smaller parts.  I think I should have started with a simple search in Kiddle.co for a practice run and see if they got the same thing that I did with a limited search result.   

This was a good starting point for me to work with my kids to see what they knew about searching the web since they mostly have tablets at home but are limited in what they know how to do.    This project was fun for me to do but I definitely have modifications  for the future.   

Activity Post

Title of the lesson: Kiddle.co for beginners 

Concept / Topic for your Learners: My students will be learning how to use kiddle.co and filtering out information.  

General Goal(s): To find information for their state report

Specific Learning Outcomes: The student will be able to use kiddle.co to find 5 facts about their state for their state report.  

Characteristics of your Learners: There are 18 2nd grade students in this classroom, 10 girls and 8 boys.   They attend a Title 1 based school  

Prerequisite knowledge:  The students have had access to iPads for 2 years now so they know how to navigate them and also they have had time with the keyboards this year too.  

Required Materials, including Web 2.0 tools or sites: They will be using their iPads, keyboards, report sheet and the website kiddle.co 

Introduction to the Activity: Hello Students.  Now that you have picked which state you want to research we are going to discuss how we are going to research it.  First we are going to be using kiddle.co. This is a search engine that is safe for students like you to use on a daily basis.  All of this information is safe for you to use in your report. If you are curious you can always ask me about the website before you look at it.   

Step-By-Step Procedures: 

1. Discuss what a search engine does for us - write ideas on board 
2. Teacher discusses the purpose of the search engine 
3. Discuss why we are using a kid safe search site - write ideas on the board 
4. Grab the iPad and keyboard 
5. Get out the state report sheet to write down the information 
6. Go to the kiddle.co app on the iPad
7. Type in Illinois 
8. Discuss what results they got (teacher is displaying the same thing from their iPad) 
9. Talk about which ones look like a great choice and why 
10. Students will then search about their own state next.  

Assessment: The teacher will walk around and see if the students are finding the information to fill in the state report sheet.   If they are able to complete the sheet and searching within one class period (45 minutes) they will receive full credit.  

Conclusion: The students will be able to use the microphone button to have it write the search words for them.  If they need anything read to them the teacher will add phrases to another app and have it read to them.  

Update 1

So for this week as I started to discuss our state projects my class and I talked about how they would fine the information for this project.  We discussed books and also using the internet for searching.  We then talked about using our iPads and how we could do this.  I told them that I would be teaching them the lesson next week on how to safely search for their information. 

What my Final Project is going to be.

I have rethought my final project idea.  I am going to teach my 2nd grade students how to search for information on the internet and how to know if it is real of not.   This is something that I use in my classroom for my students.   We discuss why we look up information, how we do it and what that information is going to tell us. 

I teach them to use www.kiddle.co and how to navigate that.  This year I have not taught my students this topic yet so we are going to be doing that in order to research about different states.  I can't wait to tell you how it goes.