I am working on a project with my 1st grade to show them how to use the school’s OPAC (online catalog). As usual, I reflect on the lesson after presenting it each time to see how I can improve on it. In this case I noticed that I was losing their attention even though they were very interested in using the catalog. During a workshop that I attended today, the “21st Century Strategies for Strengthening Your School Library Program”, they taught about Inquiry/Technology/Teaching & Learning Strategies. I realized that I was assuming that they already had the phases of inquiry already in place and I went right into showing them the computer and how it works. I now realize that I have to draw upon their prior knowledge in order to peak their interest to focus on the task at hand. This will make it relevant for them and help them to better organize the new information they will find. I plan to start off asking what things they are interested in reading or learning about. We will come up with a list on the board before we go to the computers.
Some of the students have a hard time in kindergarten and first grade knowing what book to pick out. They need some help to find books that will relate to what they know. So after showing them how to search for the ideas that we came up with earlier we will take a look at our visual search software program. The pictures spark ideas to help kids find materials they would be interested in. They are led to picture choices that lead them to a narrower picture search and eventually to the book choices (also with pictures). I think the next project would be for the students in my classes to help me to organize the visual search topics in our OPAC. It is very basic right now and I believe the students will take pride in their work. I will plan to use a wiki for the children to write in their topics and then they could add book selections to each topic. Wow, I look forward to achieving this project.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment