Charlie Quavelin's Project

Writing and Technology

Students will spend about two-months in small group instruction, for 30 minute sessions, 4 times a week. 

At the beginning of the unit, students will be asked to write a persuasive piece on a topic of high interest.  Some topics will be provided.  Students will also be expected to produce their piece on a computer.  The next day, students will display their work, in turns, on the mimio/smartboard and discuss their pieces.  They will be handed the end-of-unit assessment rubric and asked to judge themselves and others, creating a baseline rubric score.  They will be introduced to the essential question at the end of the lesson, and told they would discuss it at the beginning of the next lesson.

On subsequent lessons, students will concretely identify 4-5 writing goals to work on during the course of the unit.  Goals may include “don’t repeat a word too many times,” or “learn how to make my writing look professional.”  Using Googledocs and separate laptops, students and teacher will collaborate on a number of pieces, writing and discussing at the same time.  Depending on students’ writing goals, different lessons may focus on whole-piece, paragraph, or sentence structure, conventions, etc.  Some lessons will be devoted to effective use of word-processing tools, with explorations and discussions of different programs.  Some lessons will be devoted to exploring web resources as sources, including discussions of what a “good” source is, copyright, plagiarism, etc.  More advanced and comfortable students will be encouraged to explore person-to-person information gathering.

UnitPlanTemplatev_Quavelin_Charles.doc

Steven Schmidt's Square of Life Project

Square of Life- 

Studies in Local and Global Environments is an Internet-based  collaborative project in which students will investigate their local environment and share that information with other students from around the country and the world. Participants will:

• Identify living and non-living things in their school yards.
• Share their findings with other participating classes.
• Look for similarities and differences in the reported data.
• Prepare a final report or presentation based on their findings. 
• Note:  This collaborative project can be found at http://www.ciese.org/curriculum/squareproj/  

     Project Overview Unit Plan

     Actual Unit Plan with Lessons and Activities

Kaitie Walcott - Farm

Culminating Bridges Farm Project -  

Students will have just finished our Bridges farm unit where they will have built their own model farm while learning about the farm and its animals. Students will work with a partner and create images (minimum of 3, maximum of 5) in hyperstudio displaying what they have learned about farms and their contributions to the community. They must include at least two animals and one crop. They will put these images into photo story and narrate their images giving us the information to answer the essential question (how/what do farms contribute to our community).  

     Project Overview - resources within

     Rubric 

     Photo Story