Overview - The Science Fair Project is well underway. Our students have been grouped collaboratively into small research centers. Each group has chosen a field of study to focus their research on. The exact topics have been finely tuned, and they have now created their topic questions to guide their learning. This is all part of the higher level thinking initiative that we are pushing for in the STEM program. The students are choosing their topic of interest and are then designing the research path through the process of creating research based questions. These truly are the 21st Century skills that have been preached since the beginning of the year. Throughout this week, the groups will begin to take a look at their resources that they collected over the weekend. These resources will be "chopped down" into three pieces of credible information. They will then learn how to record notes and organize them into topics. We will also focus on the proper method for citing the information they use in their projects. At the end the of the week, we hope to have the groups ready to begin their research paper on Monday. Please make sure to purchase 3" x 5" index cards for their projects. They can be found at any local retail store and they are inexpensive.
Monday - 1/13/14 - In class today,the groups will turn in their research resources that they located over the weekend. The groups then will collaboratively decide which resources have the best information for their projects. This process will yield a result of 3 credible research sources that the groups will use to conduct their studies.
Tuesday - 1/14/14 - The Science Groups visited the Middle School Library today. A wonderful lesson on citing sources was delivered by Mrs. Conners. Students were given instruction on how to locate the resource, and then how to properly cite the work using the MLA format. For those parents who are interested on how to use a citing format, go to www.knightcite.com. The expected goal is to help the young scientist realize that there are so many resources available to them, and not only from the internet. We will use this information in our upcoming research report.
Wednesday - 1/15/14 - The Science Groups are now effectively researching their topics. Today's lesson focused on creating a graphic organizer in their Science Notebooks. From this book students were educated on how to take effective notes using index cards. They were required to locate 4-7 details that answered their core research questions. Teachers modeled how to use citations to acknowledge the work being done by others. Throughout the day we were able to knock off two research questions and the students now how three remaining.
Thursday - 1/16/14 - The Science Groups will continue to focus on pulling evidence from sources they have located over the past week. The focus is on effectively answering each core question. The groups must make sure that they are proving that their experiment will work by providing research that proves their expected outcome. This is not easy to do, but through collaboration and teacher support, most of the groups have been able to correlate their experiment with one that has been done before. We hope to finish the note taking section tomorrow so that we may move forward with the actual research report.
Friday - 1/17/14 - Today is the final time for all Science Groups to collect information on their research topics. They must organize their information into sections within their Science Notebooks. All citations must be finalized and work submitted. Today the groups also filled out a Self-Reflection piece that evaluated their progress through the first week. Each week the groups will be required to complete a form. On Tuesday of next week the groups will begin writing the research report. Busy!!! Busy!!!
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