EXPLORING WITH EXPLORERS

University of Michigan-Dearborn

 

As a cooperating teacher, my student teacher, Melissa Bias, and I  collaborated on the explorer unit and the lessons prior to writing it  We originally planned to complete the unit in five lessons.  It took longer (seven lessons) because many areas had to be modeled so students could complete the lesson.  The sequence of the unit worked well, building to the final presentations of explorers.  

Using technology turned the instruction from teacher-centered to student- centered.  They actively explored as they researched and changed learning to inquiry-based rather than passive learning.  After researching the explorers, students had a difficult time picking out key points from articles to summarize for their papers.  This lesson had to be modeled by the teacher with an article about an explorer.  It was also difficult for the students to write a rough draft on the computer.  In fifth grade, students are still writing papers by hand first and then typing their final drafts on the computer.  

Students were amazed at how easy it was to edit  their rough drafts on the computer for a final draft.  The whole experience of researching, writing a rough draft, and editing to complete the final draft was an invaluable experience for every student in the class.  It is something they will be able to build on for the rest of their school career.

The only thing I would do differently would be to model the presentation to them.  Even though we had discussed the elements of a good presentation, many students had a difficult time not reading right from their paper.


I learned that this is something I need to do more of in the computer lab with my students in every subject area.  I also need to allow my students to add other dimensions to reports such as hyper-studio.  The most important things I learned was that students considered the project much more interesting with technology and they interacted with the others in appropriate ways while using the computer.