Hi, Steph......

I have been working with Nancy Griego, a 5th grade teacher and her class. We
are at a heavily bi-lingual (60% Hispanic) and very low socioeconomic school.
Because of our student population, the teacher and I have decided to
participate in the K-4 Activities. Up until last Monday, March 23, I was a
librarian at this school. We were using my personal internet account to take
part in this project. On Monday I began a new job in the Technology Services
Dept., but I am going to continue this project with the teacher and her class.

Following is a list of activities that we have completed so far, along with a
few comments:

Every Picture Tells A Story: the group dynamics were very interesting with
some students wresting for control of the group, while others worked easily
together in a collaborative, cooperative spirit. At first, we didn't
understand how the resources were to be used by students in this activity,
until a student happened to pick up a book and turned to a picture of an
"impressionistic" looking bird and said, "Hey, that picture kind of looks like
this!" Our question had been answered!

The second part of this activity was much more engaging for students because
they had less of an idea of what the picture was. I provided books on planets,
landforms, the earth, and deserts. Students used these resources to try to
convince other members of their group to accept what they thought it was. (The
teacher and I never could see the raccoon face, but some students reported
seeing the face of a bear and similar animals.)

For both activities, we had someone share the group deduction, but also gave
individual students a chance to share their individual deduction.

We talked about the different kinds of thinking that identifying the two
pictures required. The first was fairly easy to identify because we already
had a great deal of info. re: ducks & birds stored in our brains. The second
picture provided fewer pieces of concrete information for us to connect to.
However, the students greatly enjoyed this because there was lots of room for
divergent thought. We related this to the way that scientists must think when
they observe something that they have never seen before.

We have looked briefly at the optical illusions site that was provided.
Students were very interested but we had to leave the site due to lack of time.
We will return to the site later.

Activity 1: We decided to do this activity even though we thought it might be
too easy and kind of boring for them. The teacher did this activity in the
classroom. She reported that the students were interested and we both found
that the review on the symbol meanings was very valuable in order to prepare
the students for Activity 2.

Activity 2: The students absolutely loved this activity! (and so did the
teacher and I!) This was extremely effective in communicating relative planet
sizes. We could not find the Pluto page anywhere, but I just had them use a
different planet. We did lots of extrapolating on relative size, ie., using
the page showing two planets, for example the Earth and Mars, I would
ask students whether they thought Uranus was larger or smaller than Mars, based
on the relative size of the Earth compared to Uranus.

We are going to be beginning Moonquest tomorrow. I have designed a project on
our local district network (InterAct) called "Ask the Experts" which employs
high school students to answer science-related questions that are posted
online. If the high school students are unable to answer the question, then
the question is passed on to an appropriate working scientist in the community
who has also agreed to be a part of Ask the Experts. We are going to have the
kids post their birthdates and send this request to the professor who runs the
planetarium at our local community college. This will be an incredibly
valuable activity for our students.

It was mentioned that some students and teachers may be invited to present at
the NSTA convention here in Las Vegas with you. Do you have any additional
information on that?

Thanks for all that you have done to facilitate our participating in this
project. Hope that this provides you with something that you can use at your
meeting on Thursday.

Liz

Liz Reeder
Technology Development Services
Las Vegas, Nevada 89121
email: Liz A. Reeder@aspen.interact.k12.nv.us
phone: (702) 799-5417, ext. 328

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The
learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer
exists.

~ Eric Hoffer ~
 

Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.

~ Sydney Joseph Perelman ~