Summary
Our principal informed us that some primary students needed help learning how to work together and enlisted the 2nd graders to create ways to teach others how to cooperate. This language arts project was a collaborative effort between 2nd grade students and their teachers to develop oral language, communication with others, reading and writing skills; while at the same time, getting the children to discover how to cooperate with one another. Teachers instructed students about cooperation through the use of read alouds and videos embedded on blogs to show how cooperation would feel, look, and sound like. Students selected to create projects based on interest. Visual learners could create a brochure or poster, kinesthetic learners could perform a skit, or students interested in technology could make a Pixie slideshow and recorded their voices to explain cooperation. This lesson is specific to the students who created Pixie slideshows. These students collaborated in small groups took risk, determine a topic for their project and created and assigned roles for the members. Each student planned out their ideas, collaborated with teammates to make their final project, and evaluated final projects. Students whose projects were selected were videotaped sharing their projects. This was used as our tool to teach the younger students. The video was placed on classroom blogs throughout the grade level and could be accessed by all students and parents at Shady Grove.
TIPC Ratings
This lesson was developing in research, information, and fluency. First, a KWL chart was completed to determine the students’ level of knowledge about cooperation. The children listened to stories whole group that incorporated cooperation concepts. After the teacher modeled the cooperation skills from the first story, students organized the information in a comparison chart to show what cooperation sounds like, looks like, and feels like. In pairs, they used books they selected from the classroom library to search for additional examples of how characters in stories cooperate together to add to our chart. The students finalized their research by using video clips to research how cooperation happens in real life situations. Students used the teacher’s blog to leave comments on a post of how cooperation is necessary in everyday life. Students and teacher reflected on each each others’ posts as a real life application
This lesson is ideal/target in cooperation and collaboration. Knowing that they were creating projects that were going to be shared with the 1st and Kg students, students had a set purpose for creating their videos about collaboration. Students selected who they worked wanted to work with; with the exception it could not be someone from their class. Having learned what cooperation looks, sounds, and feels like, students could put what they learned into practice while working with their partner. They engaged in collaboration as they determined how they were going to divide the work for the project and what the topic of their project was going to be. At the end of the lesson, students reflected on their cooperation with their partner and what they could do better on in the future. They also evaluated each pixie project with a rubric to select the top four projects to include in our video for the 1st and Kg students. Sharing the video with the younger students, we were able to teach these students how to cooperate and work better in small group situations. We also used a google doc as another means of communication to have kindergarteners explain what new knowledge they gained from our video.
This lesson is approaching critical thinking and problem solving skills. Students used critical thinking to create individual story ideas when creating their pixie slideshows, skits, posters, and brochures. Teachers asked each small group to explain their reasoning behind their choices and students making the Pixie project used computers to apply their thinking. Furthermore, students were asked to answer a blog question on how cooperative is needed outside of school.
This lesson is target in creativity and innovation. Letting the students work together, teachers facilitated by walking around and checking in on each group. Proximity and their engagement in their project kept students on task. Students used what they had learned about cooperation from our whole group language arts block to create products to explain how to cooperate. The children decided how to present their information to their audience. Children across the grade level got to choose between a poster, brochure, create a skit, or pixie project to share their knowledge. Students in project group reflected on their project and how they could make it better in the future and what they could change if they could go back and redo it.
