Some of the needs include:
- Identifying the best resources. Yesterday a colleague reminded me of our subscription to the Britannica online encyclopedia--I had forgotten about that. With so many resources available, it is essential that we start projects by brainstorming lists of best resources so we can guide students in that direction.
- Rethinking the project categories and possibly focusing on questions rather than category topics.
- Looking at this project with regard to our endangered species project as we typically taught research skills with that project. Our team needs to remap the year now that many standards, tools and students' skills have changed.
- Continuing to think about the way we can collaborate on this project with specialist teachers and assistants.
- Making sure that our notes and letters to family members are explicit especially with regard to information that involves their own research, storytelling, artifact collecting and communication with relatives.
Soon we'll move to the presentation stage, the hands-on tri-fold poster creation, as we prepare our "museum exhibits." With the greater movement towards skills learning, I've noticed a change in students' ability to cut, paste, label and create posters. Hence I'll have to introduce those skills as well as the process skills of making sure that all written work has been edited, laying out the pieces before pasting, pasting with care and final touches.
I'm documenting this process to invite ideas and comments, as well as to provide the details for later project analysis and growth. It's a new age of guided research given the tech tools and information access we have today, hence it is an area of the curriculum where we need to meld the best of the old with the best of the new for best effect with regard to student learning.
