Lesson+5

Lesson #5

My Small Corner of the Planet Research Project In this lesson we will research the many different ways that humans affect Planet Earth. We will also research the many ways that we can stop the negative influence that humans have over our environment using individual research projects.

The Assignment: ﻿The students will briefly learn about humans and the way they change and affect the Earth in their every day living during a class reading and discussion. Then for homework the students will over the next two weeks work on a research project that will be hung up in class to show that they furthered their understanding of one aspect of that discussion. The students will go to the class Tumblr page that will instruct them on how to complete the assignment. Basically they will be using the internet and classroom reading materials to compile information on how they can change their community environment for the better using five small steps. They will do this by pretending to be a scientist who has developed a plan that every citizen in Colorado will be encouraged to implement. They are trying to get funding from the governor of Colorado for the program that they have created based on their research. They must include the reasons why their 5 steps will be easy for every day people to implement and also a way that they can track the changes that occurred from the use of their program over a ten year period. The students can use several of the resources I have compiled for them on either the class Tumblr or the Shelfari and the bottom of this page. The Shelfari has several books that I have determined to be good reads for finding information about the different topics they may choose to research.

The Materials : You will need, a computer, the internet, access to the Tumblr class website, a dictionary, some paper for note taking, a poster board and decorating materials, a critically thinking mind, and a Great Attitude to complete this lesson.

The Technological Aspects:  The students will be able to gain a better understanding of how to use the internet as a resource for reading materials and finding information. They will learn how to go to a website for instruction. In previous decades a student might forget one part of the assignment because they lost the paper explaining what to do or they forgot it at school in their desk over the weekend. Now they can instantly look up the requirements on the class Tumblr to check as they are putting together their project. The students can also look up the different books that I recommended them online easily using Shelfari that is posted at the bottom of this page. Before this technology the student would have had to borrow the reading material from the class and might not have been able to remember the names of the books that helped with the research because they had to let another student bring it home that specific time. This way they again have instant access to the materials that will make their project so much better.

My Evaluation of the Lesson After it has Been Completed : This project was a great hands on project that helped each student evaluate their impact on nature by developing their own answers to the problems around them. I think that I could have found some other resources that were more around the reading level of the students in fifth grade. Some of the web pages I chose seemed to be slightly out of reach for the students with lower reading levels. This way the assignment could be made to better help students with disabilities or even those that would have benefitted from easier reading and less critical thinking when it came to deciphering the text.

My Concerns: I am concerned as for the students that might not have access to the internet at home. They might need more time in class to develop their research than other students with access to computers at home. Also the students that have a hard time reading or staying still might get distracted by all the other fun activities that are present and available through the internet. I am also concerned that many of the topics under the umbrella of how humans impact the earth may be to complex for fifth graders to understand. I might need to choose only a few topics that I know are understandable to fifth graders for them to research next time to decrease overall confusion.

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