Burr Airlines Flight to Asia: building inquiry skills
Created By:
Dorna Persson
Title/Role:
Library Media Specialist
Organization/School Name:
Burr Elementary School
Location:
Connecticut
Grade Level:
3 Type of Lesson:
Lesson in a unit Type of Schedule:
Flexible Collaboration Continuum:
Intensive Content Area:
Social studies Content Topic:
Three countries in Asia: India, China, Japan Scenario:
This collaborative lesson is designed to introduce students to Asia and to guide them in formulating good questions to guide their research. Students are motivated by a simulated flight to Asia, and the inquiry process is stimulated by an "onboard" slide show of the countries, as students use the images they have seen to imagine they are there and to discuss the three countries and formulate questions to guide their research. Students use the SMARTBoard to drag their questions under one of three essential questions where they have determined it belongs. Students will further develop their research action plan in subsequent lessons. Students will meet several times a week for a month in a flexibly scheduled library media center under the guidance of the classroom teacher and media specialist.
Overview:
This lesson is designed to call upon student prior knowledge and build student knowledge of and interest in India, China and Japan in order to stimulate student wonder and inquiry. Students formulate research questions that are subordinate questions of the three essential questions dictated by the district social studies curriculum: How do Asian people interact with the land?; How do they interact with one another?; and How are they affected by their beliefs? Final Product:
The final product of this lesson, which is the first step of the research process, is a list of student-generated subordinate questions organized under essential questions. Students will choose a sub-question of personal interest to them to further develop by generating sub-sub questions in the next lesson.The final product of this research project is a travel brochure created in Microsoft Publisher with text rich in describing words and a scanned images that enhance the information. Library Lesson:
The goal of this lesson is to build student understanding of what makes a good research question and develop an understanding of different types of research questions. Students will learn to build on topic knowledge to turn their curiosity and wonder about a topic into productive questions that will guide research. Students also will learn to collaborate and build off others' input to generate interesting research questions. All questions generated by the students will be available for the individual student to choose from for his or her own research question. Estimated Lesson Time:
60 minutes Have you taught this lesson before:
Yes Strategies for differentiation:
Since it is sometimes more difficult for students with special needs to generated multiple questions, the classroom teacher and library media specialist call on students with special needs early in the process of the students brainstorming research questions to ensure they contribute the question they have thought of before another student can contribute that question. We likewise let them choose their topic from the brainstormed list early on, discussing and guiding them before hand to an appropriate topic for them, always taking student interest into account. During the research process, we have available NetTrekker and Read, Write, Gold to read aloud Web sites, and access to Brain Pop and Discovery Streaming for video. Our book collection also reflects a wide range of reading abilities. We use Macintosh computers, which allow the students and teachers to easily enlarge the computer screen if needed. When necessary we will create Power Points of information at a level a student can comprehend. We also work with the special needs teachers to adjust student rubrics and offer creative note-taking alternatives for students.