Paper and Electronic Research in the Fifth Grade

The fifth grade students continue to extend their learning through presentations and reports. They write a report on an influential person around February and a president around April. The intention is to have the student complete all the work in class and learn how to independently find answers with a guide in the classroom.
I include links to web sites we use and my project wiki with more detailed directions.

Who Wrote This Information
We begin the year with a little research into time zones. In the fourth grade, the students practice paging forward and backward through pages. They learn to do simple searches in Pics4Learning to find images. They copy citations for images into presentations. The students review those skills as they complete a worksheet about time zones.

After they work, we regroup to review the answers and begin thinking about who wrote those pages. It is important to know that the Internet is a collection of pages that anyone can write. I chose two pages for the students. America's Story is maintained by the Library of Congress. Mystery Class is maintained by Annenberg Learner.

Digital Citizenship Skills
Every year, I attempt to have the students collaborate with another class outside our time zone to collaborate and share through Skype and Edmodo. We need to work synchronously with our partner to have a Skype call. Skype allows us to work at the same time from different locations. This year, Vicky Sedgwick and I connected our students via a Mystery Skype call. The students used their geography skills to determine where the partner class was located. The students moved from hemisphere, to continent, to state, to county, to town. It was very exciting. We will eventually work on digital citizenship skills as the students connect with each other in small groups in Edmodo.

The students learn to communicate appropriately while on a Skype call. There is a lot of learning involved in inviting another class to join ours including speaking clearly, listening well, and behaving appropriately in front of a web camera. Mistakes are made in a learning environment. After the call, we talk about how to improve our communications the next time we work together, if necessary. The students eventually collaboratively edit a Google Drawing and learn to respect the work of others by adding to, not destroying, another student's work. They communicate with posts to an Edmodo group and learn to type appropriate and respectful messages.

Research Skills
The fifth grade teacher assigns each students a historic figure in late January. This is the first time I assist the students in finding their own answers for a teacher's essay. The students receive a template in a document to collect their answers. We have tried paper worksheets over the years, but the document seemed to really help them this year.

The big skills in completing their research is learning how to build a query in Sweet Search 4 Me and Google. I want the students to begin to build on thinking about who wrote the website. The learn to use quotation marks around search terms to make sure the name of their historic figure is on the results page. They work to bookmark the actual web page so they can return a create their citation.

Citation Skills
Through the searching phase, the students bookmark web pages and note the name of their bookmark or encyclopedia in a word processing document. When the project is nearing completion, the students and I practice creating a citation for the encyclopedia on one class day, the web sites on a second class day, and formatting of the entries in a word processing document on the third day.

Giving Students Feedback
The students turn their completed work into Edmodo. I give the students feedback by marking up their documents. When they open their documents with my highlighting I ask them to reply in Edmodo with sentences about what they will improve in their next document. These are solid first steps in looking for information in encyclopedias, on the Internet, and citing sources.

Sharing Time

I am starting up a new wiki called Sharing Time. It is a based on a wiki that I have been using for the last three years called Time Zone Experiences. The previous wiki was originally set up by Lisa Parisi and Christine Southard. I'm moving to the new wiki because I want to take the project in a different direction. I still like the original premise, but thought I'd start anew. With Lisa's blessing, I'm looking forward to seeing where the project goes from here on Sharing Time.

Looking for Partners

The project is intended to help students and teachers work on several ISTE NETS standards and learn about time zones through comparing their school day with school days of other classes and students around the world.


The project begins within the walls of a school. Students do some research on their own into:
1) Why we have time zones
2) The name of our time for our school
3) Where in the world is the home of Greenwich Mean Time
4) How many hours ahead or behind GMT is the school


Currently, my fifth grade students are researching on their own and sharing their answers with me through a comment to an assignment posted in Edmodo.


Next I will break the two classes of fifth grade students into podcast teams.

Sharing Our Day

The podcast teams are going to write scripts about something that goes on during a time period of the school day. We will write about subject and specials classes and post the podcasts to the wiki.


My hope is to have several other classes in different time zones join with their own creative work to explain their time zones. It will be up to each individual school to decide how they would like to share their day. Some might choose to use Voki, others might use Voicethread, still others may choose a different tool such as drawings.


Once the sharing begins to happen, the teachers leading the projects can choose to set up a Skype session, Edmodo group, or other means to get the students sharing and asking questions about that part of the world.

Would You Like to Try This Project?

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. I will be working on this project throughout the year until May 2012. If international partners outside the United States join us the project can continue until September 2012 when I will begin the project anew for our school year.


Sign up via the form on my wiki by either following this link or clicking the Join Us link on the left side of the wiki. I look forward to Sharing Time with you and your students.

Time Zone Experiences - Year Two

Last year, I joined Lisa Parisi and Christine Southard on a wiki called Time Zone Experiences. The fifth grade students learned so much and had so much fun that I've decided to work on the project with my new fifth grade students. When I mentioned it to Lisa, she just said I should make sure to invite others and hopes we get many participants. Here is an explanation of the project.

The Project's Beginnings
Lisa was talking with Jo McLeay about needing a way to figure out what time it was in different parts of the world. As they spoke, they began to talk about the difficulties in explaining time zones to students. I joined Lisa in the summer of 2008 to set up the wiki and send out the message that we were looking to invite classes from around the world to learn about time zones and seasons.

Students Lead the Learning
This project is intended to give students time to investigate the concepts and create projects to show their learning and comprehension. I've started the project this year by having the students write a short paragraph in Word about our current season: fall.

After everyone had a chance to finish their paragraph, we discussed their concept of the seasons. We live in New Jersey. We talked about whether it was fall in Pennsylvania, California, and Florida. I asked them if they thought it was fall in England or Australia. This led to a discussion about the Earth in relation to the sun.

In our next class, we began talking about time. I had them answer a short survey about when they go to bed and wake up. There are questions about whether they have traveled to a different time zone and how their families communicate with others outside their time zone. We will use this information as the students complete the time zone chart in the coming weeks.

With this background information behind us, we took time to research GMT on the Internet. We worked on the Activboard to generate a list of search sites the students use to do research for their teachers. The students sat at their individual computer to try to learn what the letters GMT stand for. As a hint, I told them that we have been speaking about time and seasons. The letters have something to do with these topics. Last year, students were getting confused with other topics that use GMT as an abbreviation.

Each class is forty-two minutes long. This past class I had the students try to find out why Greenwich Mean Time is used, where Greenwich is located, and if they could find out what time it was in New Jersey if GMT is 11:00. We spoke about their research and then began to learn about military time on the Activboard. They began to get a feel for 0:00 being midnight and 12:00 being noon. Everyone had a chance to convert a time on the board.

Next Steps
I will be assigning a time period to each student. They will have to determine what is happening in our part of the world at GMT 0:00 through GMT 23:00. This is an example of what the students did last year. We will then roll the information into entries for the Time Zone Experiences table for 2009. Here is the time zone chart from 2008. Last year, the students created audio podcasts for various time periods and months. We will do the same again this year. The students really enjoyed using Garageband.

Reflections
Once all the student work is completed, we will add to the Voicethread reflections Lisa set up.

Independent Project
This is a project that relies on participation from other schools so that the students can appreciate other student perspectives around the globe. The nice part about the project is that we do not have to have any particular deadlines. Classrooms can participate and add to the wiki as it suits their needs. We will also be able to look at last years work.

Is It Something You'd Like to Do?
If this project interests you, please let me know via this blog, the wiki, Twitter, or any other venue in which we connect. I will add your Wikispaces id to the wiki. You do not have to update the tables on the wiki with your class information until you are ready to update the table and begin adding your student's research and creative content.

Mission Patches and Time Zone Experiences

The fourth and fifth graders are busily working on their projects following the surveys.

Fourth Grade Mission Patches
I am so much happier with the mission patches the fourth graders are creating this year. In previous years, I didn't give them a planning sheet and it showed in their work. We did not vote on and analyze the NASA images in previous years.

This week we prepared to finish the project and I'm adding one new final twist to it. We exported the images as JPEGs from KidPix. It gave us a chance to talk about the word "export" (as in exporting apples to another country) and how it relates to computers. We will bring them into Word next week. In Word, they will have to describe why they included the different elements on their patch. I will be hanging up all the patches in the hallway and they will vote on their favorite classmate created image. This will be the first time they export an image from KidPix to use in Word.

Fifth Grade Time Zone Experiences
The fifth grade spent some time reading what the students in New York, Australia, and England have typed into the wiki. During the week, they found their three assigned time periods to document. Last week, they brought their class schedule to the computer lab. We have the results from the sleeping and waking survey, too. This should give them some data to include in their time of day chart.

Once that is complete, we can update the Time Zone Experiences wiki and begin learning how all the digital cameras work. I have five digital cameras and twenty-two students. If I pair them up, I can have two different teams working on two different projects. While some students are working with the cameras, I will have the other students learning to import the photos and label them. I will need one more small project to keep everyone occupied. They will be using the camera to document different time periods in the school day for the Time Zone Experiences wiki.

Time Zone Experiences Ahead

Several months ago, I was chatting online when the book Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney came up. I mentioned that I always thought that book could turn into a great project. Lisa Parisi agreed, but it was the end of the 2007-2008 school year and just too late to start something new.

How Projects Evolve
Fast forward to summer 2008. I asked Lisa if she wanted to collaborate on a project related to the book. She mentioned that she had been talking with Jo McLeay in Australia and they had a need to find a time to talk synchronously. This led to a discussion about how hard it can be to get a feel for what time it is in your home country when it is 2pm in a country half way around the world. It was about this point that Time Zone Experiences was born. As I talked with Lisa, I decided that it would be a great opportunity for exploration with my students as well.

Some Brainstorming First
Lisa put together a beautiful image for the Time Zone Experiences wiki. She used Glogster (now another site I have to explore). We spent some time on Skype doing a little brainstorming. The basic premise of the project is to introduce the idea of global collaboration with our fifth grade students. We would like them to do all the research into what GMT is and how it relates to our world and others who live far from us. Lisa had a nice outline to ensure solid learning gains in the students. Before they really begin much work, the children must come to a classroom concensus on what GMT stands for and how it is used.

Time Table
There is a table of times from GMT 00:00 - 24:00. In this table, the students will write short pieces on what happens throughout the day. For example, at 12:00 GMT we are just ready to start our school day since we are GMT -4. They will make a short notation of what happens throughout the day in one hour increments. In addition, the students have a link for each time slot to share creations demonstrating what is happening in that time period. The creations can be a video, audio podcast, photograph, drawing, poem, song, or anything else the students make.

Month Table
The world is very different by hemisphere. Christmas time will always mean hoping for a white Christmas. In Australia, though, it is summer. The wiki contains a month table. Again, the students will reflect on what their part of the world is experiencing in each month. In addition to the short written piece, there are links on each month to share creative works.

The Paths Can Diverge
We are trying to make this a very "low threshold of pain" project. I teach my fifth graders twice per week for 42 minutes. Lisa has her students in a self-contained classroom. We are hoping for global participation. Anyone can jump into this project and take it at their own pace. The intention is to have our students begin to react to the differences in the varied classroom settings after the new year arrives.

My Focus
I am starting out with a bit of research. My students are going to work on learning about the many ways of performing research on the Internet. I am going to start by brainstorming how students currently research topics tomorrow. I want to allow them to use their methods to try and find out what GMT stands for and what it means in global communication. After ten minutes at the computer, we will gather together and take a look at the following resources:

• Merriam-Webster's Word Central - an elementary friendly dictionary to find out what GMT stands for
• The Simple English Wikipedia - to find a simplified explanation of Greenwich Mean Time
• How Things Work - to learn a little more about GMT

Once that is accomplished, I have created a separate table on my own wiki for the students to do some brainstorming. We should have established, at this point, that New Jersey is GMT -4. Each student has three time periods to personally research. This will allow us to work as a group on the Time Zone Experiences wiki with pre-work accomplished individually.

From Start to Finish
We will continue to build on the work by using our digital cameras. Those images can be included in the creative section for each time zone and month.

The Main Takeaway
There is a lot of pre-work to this project. We have had a fair number of educators request access to the wiki. With Lisa and I both in GMT -4, we hope many other classrooms outside our time zone will be able to keep up the enthusiasm and build a nice reference for student reflection. It will be a good, concrete lesson on how big our world is and what a difference our location on our planet makes to communicating with others.

---

Image Citation:
"Time zones." Andrei Z's photostream. 2007 Aug 18. 2008 Sep 11.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1439/1164608259_7a1ad35f5e.jpg?v=0