Technology Tuesday: Kinder Research

More thanks to our wonderful District Library Instructional Coordinator for helping us to take our research up a notch using the Guided Inquiry model.  Our kinder students researched jobs in the community and the tools people need to do their jobs.

This involved kinder coming four times for 45 minutes each time (and we still could have used more time).  We started off discussing what would happen if our school did not have a custodian.  You can read about that here.  Then the students went to tables where they sorted picture cards.  The cards had pictures of people and then tools that they might use in their jobs.

We had a good discussion about what tools people need to do their jobs well.  

In the 2nd lesson, the class was split into two groups.  One group stayed on the carpet with the teacher to look at books and the other groups went to the computers with me to read an ebook.  Then we switched. 

At the book station, I had books from these two series out on the floor.  

 Being the non-kinder teacher that I am, I was so thankful for the suggestion to give have index cards prepared with one green sticky and two yellow stickies. 

 As the students looked through the books, the put the green sticker on a page where they found the name of the job and the two yellow stickies when they found a tool the person used.

After they placed their stickies, they went and sat on a different part of the rug and the teacher paired them with another student to share what they found.  Most students had time to do 2 books.  

Meanwhile at the computer station, we navigated to four ebooks that our district owns.  These are called Community Helper Mysteries and give clues about the person all the way through the book and then reveal who it is at the end.  

After they listened to 2 books, they came to the table where they glued the cover of the books that they listened to and wrote the name of the person and a tool they used in their research journal (5 half sheets of manilla paper stapled together).

On the next visit, the used iPads to access PebbleGo and listen to one of the community helpers there. Again, in their journals, they wrote the name of the person and two tools they used.  

On the fourth and final visit, they used 30 hands to make a movie of one of the jobs and tools that they researched.  The librarians in our district had previously all found some pictures to put in a file that the students could access for this part.  The students saved the 3 pictures they needed to the ipads and then I walked them through adding the pictures to 30 Hands and how to record.  We modeled the video after the Community Helper Mystery Books.   The students saved their videos to the camera roll and then I loaded them in dropbox for the teachers to access back in the classroom.  

This was a great project for kinder however, as always I wish we had more time.  You'll notice on this video that we forgot to include the source slide.  We talked about citing our sources and how important it is to give credit for where we found our research, but when it came to crunch time we didn't make one to include.  We always seemed to be rushed trying to get 6 or 7 classes in four or five times during the two-week window that our district scope and sequence allows for research.  Wish it could be an ongoing skill through the whole year as interesting things come up instead of a two week chunk of time in their ELA block.