Learning in Progress

When we get back to school after Winter break, I'll be reviewing the Big 6 research process with 4& 5th graders and introducing it to 3rd. In the past, I've gone through a PowerPoint presentation and talked the kids through the process, but I really wanted to speed up that introduction.  To help with that, I made a PowToon video that keeps the intro to under 4 minutes.  Find the video [ here ]. I've also spent some time revising the Project Planner I use with the kids to provide them with some structure in considering the Big 6 steps.  The PowToon actually provides a demonstration for how to use the project planner.  You can find the planner [ here ].  I will likely the pause the video occasionally to add information and provide more of an explanation or to answer questions. When kids are actually doing their research, I have a standard set of graphic organizers for them to use that requires them to record all of the source information.  Thi...

This week I’m going to introduce my third graders to the Big 6 Research Model . In graduate school, for my LMS classes, they really promoted this as the perfect way to help kids learn how to research a topic, so last year, I made a full out attempt to teach my 5 th graders to use it for their Social Studies Fair.   I did a PowerPoint presentation and developed some graphic organizers based on examples I had seen.   And, they had no idea what I was talking about. I tried the model again with my STLP students a few weeks later as a way to help guide them in developing a technology project to do for our regional completion, and it worked!   Of course, it took one of my 5 th grade members to explain to me that it worked that time because I walked them through each step instead of just zipping through the directions for a social studies project they were mostly working on by themselves.   It made sense – they needed me to model for them how to use the materials and ...