Category Archives: Grade 5

Extended Studies in Library Media 2018 – 2019

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Gr. 6

Fall Term – Shark Tank. Over 30 students worked in teams or alone to develop a product that could solve a real world problem.

They then “pitched” their product ideas to staff member investor “Sharks.” In order to successfully pitch their ideas, students needed to have a basic understanding of the economics of venture capital investing.  In addition to creative problem-solving, this experience was also an opportunity for students to gain confidence in their oral presentation skills.   A few students opted to be the “production crew”, introducing the inventors to the potential investors, and running and filming “the show”.

“Have a pet at home that could use a pet door to independently go in and out during the day, but don’t want to encourage the local raccoons in to dine out of your kitchen trash?  Solution: A pet door with Nose Print recognition capability, the DNA Pet Door!” 

Gr. 5.  Term 2 – Passion Projects in Science and Social Studies

Did Mrs. O’Leary’s cow start the Great Chicago Fire? It’s possible!   Topics like this that sparked curiosity were explored in depth by students through guided “passion research projects”.  Students decided on a topic in either United States history or one involving space science.  They also chose how they wanted to present their knowledge to their peers, either by creating a digital presentation, constructing a physical model, giving a talk or a combination of  these.  We learned about NASA’s Robonaut program, the theory of black holes, the D-Day Invasion, the Great Chicago Fire and the Mars Rover.

 

Gr. 6.  Term 3 – The Amazing Race 

38 students participated in the second annual Amazing Race, Spofford Edition.   Two races were held at the end of May and many staff volunteers eagerly volunteered to be “cluemasters” at the race locations throughout the school.   Based in part on the popular television show, the SPS Amazing Race requires that students think creatively “outside the box” and work harmoniously in collaboration with teammates to first create a challenging race for their peers and then to successfully compete in their own race.   While racing, students have to work together and develop critical thinking skills under pressure in order to decipher the clues that lead them to the race locations. They then have to perform a task at each location found, such as dancing, singing, writing, solving math problems, scoring baskets, speaking in a different language or building foil boats.  Creating the challenging races themselves took a lot of time and effort from the students and competing in the races was often a struggle, but in the end, all students involved reported having a great experience and were glad they stuck to it.

Digital Citizenship Week October 15-19 2018

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Digital Citizenship Copyright © 2016 Marie Bou k12 inc.

What is digital citizenship?  

According to TeachThought, digital citizenship is “the self-monitored habits that sustain and improve the digital communities you enjoy or depend on.”

“Digital Citizenship prepares young people and adults alike to use digital media safely, confidently, and wisely”, according to Cyberwise.
 Common Sense Media  defines digital citizenship as way of being, thinking and acting online.

This fall in Library Media classes , students in Gr. 4 -6 participated in various learning activities that emphasized the importance of responsible digital citizenship.  Read on to see examples of digital citizenship in action in Library Media classes . . .

Gr. 4  – Our focus was on the digital citizenship concepts of  “digital footprints” and “media balance”.  Using videos from Common Sense Media as a stepping off point to class discussions, students reflected on their learning and understanding of these concepts with response activities assigned to them in Google Classroom.

The video, Follow the Digital Trail , reminds students to think before they post, to be aware that everything they post online is traceable and permanent, and to consider the effects of their posts on others.

Pixabay.com

The video, My Media Balance  explores the effect that our media choices can have on how we feel each day.  Media balance is “making healthy choices about what media you choose, when you choose it, and  how much you use it”.

Next, we are creating student online user accounts to WebRangers , a the National Park Service’s online site “for kids of all ages” as part of our larger research unit about U.S.  National Parks.  Students are learning how to create safe usernames, passwords and secret questions and answers, as they sign up to be WebRangers.

NPS.gov
ISTE Standard 2a
Students cultivate and manage their digital identity and reputation and are aware of the permanence of their actions in a digital world.

 

Gr. 5 –  Students learned how to create a Google Drawing that demonstrated the main purposes of Google Drive (access, storage, creativity and sharing) while also demonstrating the importance of giving credit to to the author/owner of creative works, (in this instance, digital images) by linking any image that students use in their work to its public domain file address.

Google Drive for Education apps (G Suite) give students access to image files that have been labeled “fair for reuse”.  Students learned how to find the URL of each image they chose to add to their Google Drawing using the Google Drive image search tool, and then used the Google link tool to link the image to its online address.

If students could not find an image they wanted within Google Drive, they learned how to use the general Google Image search modifier tool, “labeled for reuse.”

Google Drawing by Suhaila Merhi

We also accessed My BrainPOP’s lesson resources, Copyright in a Digital World, to explore what fair use means (allows people to use copyrighted works without permission) and to learn when it’s necessary to give credit to the rights extended to the author of a creative work like a book, song, or piece of art.   Students used our schools’ subscription to BrainPOP to watch a video, take a review quiz and play an interactive game together (The Meaning of Beep).  Google Suites connection to engaging BrainPOP’s instructional and assessment tools (quizzes and games) provides educators with formative assessments and insight into their students understanding of the concepts they need to know.

Flicker.com

Gr. 6 –  In concurrence with their grade level Social Studies curriculum units for the fall, students learned how to create a Works Cited document in Library Media classes.  A works cited document is a list of citations in MLA format, from reputable information sources, that give credit to the information sources used in doing a research project.  Students accessed our school subscriptions to World Book Online, Research in Context, and Country Reports in order to find relevant articles, facts and media about countries of the world and hunter-gatherer peoples.  These resources provide the actual citation so that students simply need to find the citation and copy and paste it into their works cited documents.

Giving proper credit to information sources is an essential digital citizenship skill.

isu.libguides.com
ISTE Standard 2c
Students demonstrate an understanding of and respect for the rights and obligations of using and sharing intellectual property.

Media Kahoots!

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“Kahoot! is a free game-based learning platform that makes it fun to learn – any subject, in any language, on any device, for all ages!”

Educators around the world have discovered the power of Kahoot in the classroom.  Kahoot engages students in a challenging, often highly competitive experience with their academic content.  All Gr. 5 students played an original Kahoot in their Media classes as an end-of-unit assessment.  Many students responded postively to this alternative way to “show what they know” about using Wikipedia as a source of information.   Click on the link below to view, and play! this Kahoot.

Gr. 5 Wikipedia Kahoot

In Gr. 6 Media, students first created their own class Kahoot questions about the various forms of media, both traditional and modern, based on their Forms of Media research projects.  Click on the link below to view and play Mrs. Sierpina’s class Media Kahoot.

Gr. 6 Mrs. Sierpina’s class Media Kahoot

 

Infographics

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Grade 5 Google Drive

“Infographics are visually stimulating and force us to summarize well.”

from Matt Miller, Ditch That Textbook

Last year in Gr. 4 Media classes, students practiced their word processing skills using Google Docs.  In these docs, they shared their ideas about what Google Drive is and what it does. Classes then came up with a group-generated definition of Google Drive.

This year, in Gr. 5, as an introduction to the Google tool, Google Drawing, students took that definition and summarized it in an infographic.

The slideshow above is a compilation of one student-created infographic from each Gr. 5 classroom.

Students also created a slide that listed the URLs of each of the images they used in their infographics to demonstrate their understanding of attribution.

AASL Standard 2.1.6 Use the writing process, media and visual literacy, and technology skills to create products that express new understandings.

 

Copyright, Creative Commons and Using Images Responsibly

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Image from Common Sense Media

In Gr. 5, students are learning about copyright and creative common licensing when using images in their academic work.  Students  use digital images under the Fair Use category of copyright law, and are learning how to create hyperlinks  in order to give credit to the source of the images they use in their work.

ISTE Standards 2c

Students demonstrate an understanding of and respect for the rights and obligations of using and sharing intellectual property.

The Fate of Merlin

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In Term 2 Media classes, all Gr. 5 students participated in the Unit, “Read It or Weed It;  The Fate of Merlin”.  An essential element of maintaining a library collection is the process  “weeding”, the culling out of books and materials that are dated and no longer popular with the patrons of the library.   This task usually falls upon the Librarian.  For this unit, Gr. 5 students played the librarian role to determine the fate of several fiction book series that were once, but are no longer, popular.

We began by creating a data table  in Google docs of agreed upon criteria for which to assess the twelve books in the fantasy/adventure/mythology series of  T.A Baron’s, called The Merlin Saga.   Students browsed through the books themselves, referred to the author’s website and also read reviews of the books in Good Reads and Amazon Books for Children.   Students then tallied up their total number of “read it” criteria and their total number of “weed it” criteria for one book in the series and entered these numbers in a Google Form.   See the chart below for the grade level results and the Fate of Merlin.

As a follow-up extension of learning, students were then tasked with choosing the “fate” of one other fiction series from among 25 different series books in our library that are no longer circulating on a regular basis.  Some series that students decided to “weed” are Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo and Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson.  Two that were deemed still “readable” are Skeleton Creek by Patrick Carman and Vet Volunteers by Laurie Halse Anderson.

Massachusetts School Library Association Standard 3. Locate and Access Information – Students will be able to access and gather information efficiently and effectively.

American Association of School Libraries Standard 2.  Learners use skills, resources and tools to draw conclusions, make informed decisions, apply knowledge to new situations and create new knowledge. 

What does a Gr. 5 Media class look like?

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In Grade 5 Media classes,  students begin in the Media lab and choose between TTL4,  Dance Mat Typing or Big Brown Bear software programs in which to practice and increase their keyboarding skills. During this portion of class, those students who would like to check out a library book that day are able to do so in lieu of keyboard practice.  This time also allows students who may have missed a Media class to make up any missed work using their Google Classroom account assignments feature.

This winter, we have been using the topic of black holes to learn more about online resources of information.  In our information-rich age, students and adults alike often get lost in an online “black hole”, getting sucked into the vastness of a simple Google search results list, for instance.  The essential question of this unit; what is the best resource to use according to my learning needs?

Wikipedia is an often-used resource that is widely regarded, and alternately, criticized for its free, open sourced information.  Students were engaged in lively debates over the usefulness and appropriateness of Wikipedia for this school use.  After analyzing the Wikipedia black hole article, students learned about vandalism of articles in Wikipedia, and also that the information found in this particular article was not written at a reading level that they could comprehend.  We agreed that the best online resources in which to learn about black holes were the NASA for students website and an article with supporting media found in the Britannica School Edition encyclopedia.

Massachusetts School Library Media Standard

7.7

Use critical and creative thinking skills to analyze, synthesize and evaluate relevance, reliability, and authority of sources.