It is important for students to be reflective and evaluate their own strengths and weaknesses. Technology can make this even easier to incorporate into a project using online resources like blogs, ProfilerPRO, and SurveyMonkey. Blogs can be used to give students a chance to reflect on their learning, while ProfilerPRO and SurveyMonkey provide ways for students to assess their learning and compare it to the whole class.
When getting students minds ready for a project, there are many different things you can do as a teacher. This chapter suggests the graphic organizer K-W-L to have the students reflect on their prior knowledge, what they want to know, and after the project, what they have learned, but since this is a traditional thing to use there are other ways to get your students imaginations flowing. Present the topic of your project a week early, to give them time to talk about it at dinner, and with their friends. Also, introducing a guest to talk about their profession, for example bringing in a professional astronaut for a project about space.
It is very important to teach what the students the basic skills and knowledge they need to complete the project. It is necessary to provide this prerequisite knowledge so the students have enough familiarity with the topic to be able to have independence throughout the project. In other words, teaching the basics so the students can jump right into the fun stuff! It isn’t necessary to have the students start researching the boring basic knowledge when they can learn it in a few lessons prior to research.
When preparing students for technology use in a project first let them explore how to use the program. Then once some students who are more technology advanced can help teach other students how to use the program. Also introducing journals or different types of logs that students can track their progress can help students stay on track for the goals they set for the project. Lastly, if you are familiar with the technology the students will be using, show them yourself. If not there is always a technology specialist who can demonstrate for the students.
Promoting inquiry and deep learning is important for all students before starting a project. Making sure all students are aware of the primary learning outcome of the project. Have students develop their own questions to further their thinking with your guidance. Then they can use search engines to help answer these questions.
This chapter relates to our project because it discusses the importance of knowledge that we should provide our students before starting the project, and with how to introduce the technology they will be using.
I agree that it is important to teach students the basic skills needed to start a project. If students are well informed and know what they are doing they are more likely to stay on task and be independent throughout the project. I definitely have had classes in which we were not well informed about what we were supposed to be doing and then groups tend to veer off task and small discussions form. Journals and blogs are also very important I believe as well because it allows children to learn from their past mistakes and work off of things that have worked for them in the past. It is also a great way for students to become independent.
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