Category Archives: Grade 6

6 Resolutions Every Family with Tweens and Teens Should Make in 2016

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Happy New Year!

Caroline Knorr, an Editor at Common Sense Media, laments in her  January 4, 2016 online article , that   “8- to 12-year-olds average nearly six hours a day on entertainment media”!  However, she also reassures parents that “even if your tweens and teens know way more about media and technology than you do, you can still help them navigate the digital world safely, responsibly, and productively”.

In Gr. 6 Media classes, we are discussing the importance of thinking about the messages behind the media students see and hear every day.

One of Knorr’s recommended resolutions is to  “Encourage healthy skepticism. The ability for tweens and teens to think about the messages behind their media is more important than ever. Ads and content are increasingly becoming entwined, and studies show kids have a hard time telling the difference between them. Online stories are regularly unmasked as hoaxes. Even companies’ privacy policies are filled with legalese. Help kids to think critically about all the content they consume. Ask: Who made this? Who’s the audience? What are the messages?”

To this end, Gr. 6 students are creating advertisements in their Media classes.  The ads are based on the surveys they each conducted with their classmates in the fall.  Are their ads completely true?  Who is their audience? What are the messages?

I look forward to sharing some of the students’ work with you soon!

MSLMA Standard 5.7  Use appropriate medium to produce an original product to communicate research results.

Survey Says! Creating meaningful data with Gr. 6 students

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Screen Shot 2015-10-25 at 6.20.33 PM

Google for Education provides its users with many useful digital educational tools for students and teachers.

Students in Gr. 6 Media Classes are creating their own surveys using Google Forms, and then deciding how to successfully share the resulting Google Form surveys with others in order to gather relevant data.

In class, we have been examining and discussing the (3) sharing tools provided to us by Google Classroom.

The email sharing feature is not available to Spofford students at this time, nor is the sharing via Social Media outlets such as Twitter or Facebook.

This left us with the option of sharing the link to our surveys with fellow students in our classes.   Although this approach worked for some student surveys responses, some student surveys did not receive sufficient responses (data) to make their surveys meaningful enough for data analysis.

Together, the students and I agreed to try the strategy of sharing all of their surveys only with me, via links, so that I can then aggregate all of their survey links in one Google Doc format, and then share the document with classmates to access and respond to all surveys.

The survey screen shot above was shared with me via a Google Forms Link by Sarah Green.

I am looking forward to reporting out student survey results.

We will all learn more about student preferences for favorite author, genre, sport, pizza toppings, pet dog and more as reported via online survey.

Up next:   Critical thinking skill . . .  how reliable are surveys?   What factors, if any, could influence survey responses?

Yours, in learning together,

Ms. Boulay

Massachusetts Technology Literacy Standard 3.5  Research: Gathering and Using Information.  Use online tools to gather and share information collaboratively with other students.

Massachusetts Technology Literacy Standard 3.6  Problem Solving:  With teacher direction, use appropriate technology tools (e.g., graphic organizer) to define problems and propose hypotheses.