As for the work, I gave the students time to write down notes for their islands while we were at the library or the computer lab. The students learned how to use the indexes of books to find relevant information when we had our library times. They also learned which websites are trustworthy when we were at the computer lab. It was great watching them help each other to find good information for their projects.
The students also learned how to manage their time as they had to have their notes completed by a certain due date and then their project ready to present by another due date. While we did work on a lot of the project at school, some of the project still had elements to complete at home. The children not only worked on their writing skills, but they also worked on their speaking and listening skills too. Most of them spoke loudly and clearly on the presentation day. They listened respectfully to their peers share about the Hawaiian Islands. It was quite a fun, rewarding project!
Here are the directions for the Hawaiian Islands Project that you can feel free to edit to meet your class' needs:
Hawaiian
Islands Project
Directions:
1. Choose 1 of the 8 main Hawaiian Islands to study. Get
approval from Mrs. K by Thursday, September
3, 2015.
2. Find resources
about your island to read soon. Your textbook has a little bit of
information to get you started. There are some books in the classroom that you may borrow. We may use the encyclopedias and the computers at the
library to do some research on Fridays. We will also use some Monday computer
lab time to do online research as
well. You may want to ask parents to kindly take you to the public library to
check out resources too. Maybe they could put books on hold for you so that
they will be available when you do get a chance to go.
3. Start taking notes about your island on note cards. Keep
your note cards in a safe place so
that they do not get lost.
4. Write down each resource’s bibliography information right
after you decide it is good enough to take notes from. Please see the Bibliography form that I will pass out
for examples. We will practice and work on the Bibliography together at school.
But you want to make sure you have the needed information, especially if it is
a website so that you can find the website again.
5. Let’s aim to have all of our notes written by Wednesday, September 23, 2015.
6. Then we must organize our notes by topics to write a
report.
7. You may choose how you want to present your report. You
could do a traditional paper, create a poster with the different topics, create
a PowerPoint (with the report in the notes section and your big points in the
PowerPoint), or create a booklet, pamphlet, or magazine. The report should be
neatly handwritten or typed.
8. Make sure you include a map of your island too. You may
want other photos or drawings to make it more interesting as well.
9. Wednesday, October
7, 2015 is when we will present our projects to the class.
