Students as Researchers

Students as Researchers

It’s important for teachers to provide the appropriate tools for students to be successful. Research for young Kindergarten students should be fun and engaging. What better way for students to be engaged than for them to research a topic that interests them.

I need to first explain to my students what I mean to research a topic. When you have a topic that you are interested in learning more about you research that topic by collecting information. You investigate the topic through research in order to gather materials and true facts about the topic.

I also discuss with my students plagiarism and what it means. Plagiarism is someone else’s work presenting it as your own. As students you need to write things in your own words and not copy someone else’s words, that is what you called plagiarism.


Steps that I discuss with my students:

• Clarify: what is it that you would like to learn more about?
• Search: we will search for information through books, video, social networks, read alouds and google search engines from your iPad
• Evaluate: is the information you have received what you're looking for and is it a true fact? (I went over a poster that explains how to evaluate a website and posted it in the classroom for students to use as a reference)
• Questions: ask yourself good questions, is the information going to answer your questions is it the only source?
• Cite: where does the information come from? How can you write your search information in your own words? (paraphrase or summarize)
• Help: don’t be afraid to ask for help with your topic. Ask a teacher, librarian or social networks, these are all wonderful resources.

When researching with the iPads helpful things students should understand:

• Use quotation marks if you want keywords in an exact order
• If you are not able to write the word correctly that you want to research it’s ok. Google search engine will often understand what your trying to say
• Lastly, students need to understand that each students result may be different if they are searching the same topic. It all depends on what search engine they are using. 

This research assignments take several weeks. I begin with the understanding of research listed above. Once all my students have a good understanding of how research is done we can begin with a question.

What is it that you would like to learn more about?

Together we came up with a list of ideas that I wrote on my white board. See below:

As you can see from our list, students have a very wide range of ideas that they were interested in researching more about.

I then asked my students to return to their seats and complete the KWL chart about the topic that they are interested in learning more about. (picture below)

Above is an example of a KWL that a student wanted to know more about cheetahs. All students need to complete a KWL chart for their research project. This allows me to see what students already know, what students wonder and what they want to learn more about. What they learned comes at the end when they have completed all their research. KWL chart is a great way to start a research project with young children.


Students begin their research by using our classroom library to find books on their topics. If they didn’t find what they were researching they take a walk to our school library. If was interesting to see how many students went directly to the book area and how many went to the iPad.

                              Google Search                                Book with true facts research


Students who used the iPad did an easy Google search on their topic.

                                Youtube search                                      Google search

Once students have gathered all their research and information they can put all their writing down on paper to create a book. They can also go back to their KWL chart and fill out what they have learned about their topic. To make things fun for students I told them they could choose how they wanted to present their research to their parents and peers. They could create a poster or a Fun Fact book.

The poster above was created by a student who wanted to learn more about technology. All her research was done with the iPad.

The Fun Facts book listed above was created by a student who wanted to learn more about lions. As you can see he was able to come up with several different true facts about lions from his research.

He wrote:

• Male lions carry their cubs with there mouth.
• The lion goes to eat first. Lions eat grass trees. Lions chase their prey. Lions work together to hunt their prey.
• They have manes. The lion's skin blend in to the grass. They have good smell they can smell three miles away.
• Lions are the biggest cats ever. They have red eyes.
• Lions have sharp teeth to bite their prey. They roar to scare animals away.
• Lions hide in tall grass to hunt prey.
• Lions have floppy tails.
• Lions keep baby lions in there home.
• Lions tail other lions.
• Lions get about 6 feet tall.
• Baby lions stay with their father. 
• Female lions hunt the prey.
• Lions hide in the grass.
• Manes protect lions when they fight.
• Lion's whiskers get about 5 inches long. 

Reflection:

During this entire research project I was able to observe students researching and engaged in their topic. They enjoyed doing the work, taking ownership of their work and it was fun. They learned a lot about their topic and how to research their topic.

Below are some other great website search engine applications that are helpful for young children.

Global Citizens

Global Citizens

Global citizen begins in the classroom with connections and collaboration with peers and expands outside of the classroom and around the world. Global citizen allows students with the opportunity to grow global empathy. Empathy in the classroom provides students with a positive experience. It builds positive culture and helps students to work with others in order to bring the community together.

Students with empathy are able to learn to understand each other and build thrusting friendships. In the classroom we have students of all different cultures. We have students from China and Serbia. These students are ELA students. Their social economic background is different from ours which helps us to build stronger empathy skills. As a teacher we play an important role for students. We help students develop and display empathy. It’s important for us to us to be able to equip our young students to be future leaders of our communities and way beyond.

Global citizen takes place through academics, social curricula, local, national, global initiative and collaboration with partnerships with other schools.

Read aloud is a way for students to see the world around us. Students are able to listen to stories and see how other students live in other countries. This also allows students to understand events taking place around the world and reflect on how they feel about what other students are facing.

I want my students to have the opportunity to collaborate and interact with other children around the world. I am fortunate enough to have a little cousin in Italy the same age as my students. It makes sense for me to teach my students a culture that I’m very familiar with and speaks the language fluently. I speak Italian fluently and I also can write in Italian. I have traveled to Italy many times and also studied Italian in school for eight years. I am able to teach my students about my culture and extend their learning by collaborating with other children in Italy.

I start off by reading a book to my students about Italy and the Italian culture. This is a great way to demonstrate the connections between the Italian culture and the culture in America.

After we read the book we put a list together of things we learned about Italy from the book.

Italian Traditions

• Anytime you walk into an establishment you always greet with a hello.
• Families eat together at large tables
• Opera is popular in Italy (opera tells stories using music and song to create an emotional reaction from the audience)
• Soccer is a popular sport in Italy
• Italy is shaped like a boot.
• Italians kiss on both cheeks
• Italians are known for pasta, pizza, cheese and good food.
• Roma is the capital of Italy
• Color of the Italian flag (red, white, green)

I made sure that my students had access to many different books about Italy.

The next day during morning meeting I had my students greet each other in Italian by shaking their friends hand and saying “Buon Giorno” which means good morning. Buon Giorno is a formal way of saying hello. An informal way would be “ciao”. You would say ciao to a friend or family member. Ciao can be used as both hello or goodbye.

I also show my students an application called Google Earth in which we can find a specific location in Italy. I’m going to focus their attention to a little town called Avellino in Italy. Avellino is where my family comes from and it’s located in Southern Italy is surrounded by mountains. There are approximately 55,000 thousand people that live in Avellino.

Comparisons:

6.9 million people in Massachusetts

685,094 people in Boston, Massachusetts in which Boston is the MA capital and largest city

New York, has 8.623 million people

Chicago has 2.716 million people

Another way for students to learn more about the Italian culture is through a Youtube video. A fun video that is age appropriate is called, “Italy Facts for Kids-Cool, Fun Italy Facts!’

During writers workshop students wrote about what they learned about Italy and drew pictures. I

played Italian music in the background for students from an application called Radio Garden.

Every culture has their own type of music. In America we have rap, jazz, country, rock, classical and hip hop. In Italy they also have similar music such as pop, classical, rock, hip hop and opera. Music unifies all races and has been used throughout the world for enjoyment, pleasure and different occasions.

Playing music in the background with students are working really helps students with stress, performance, making them feel happier, helps with learning and memory skills and it is relaxing. Someone once said, “music can change the world because it can change people”.

Lastly, global citizen really takes off when you are able to communicate with other students from a different countries. I explained to my students that we are going to build a relationship with a little six year old boy that lives in Avellino, Italy. I have already showed them on Google Earth whereabouts he lives. We are going to communicate with him through an application called WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is a free application that you can download onto your iPhone or computer. You can send text messages, voice messages, video, photo, voice call or video calls. It’s a great application that allows me to stay connected with my family and friends in Italy.

Students and I communicate with Angelo from Italy several times throughout the year. He is a six year old boy who attends Kindergarten. We teach each other different things. My Kindergarteners taught him how to count 1-10 in English. Angelo taught my students how to count 1-10 in Italy.

Uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove, dieci

Reflection:

I really enjoyed teaching my students about a different country and language.  Technology makes this all possible for us.  Students learned so much in just a few weeks.  They enjoyed being able to watch YouTube videos and communicating with children in Italy.  I feel that we need to bring the fun back into learning.  When students are enjoying what they are learning, it has more meaning for them.  

Students as Scribers

Students scribing in Kindergarten allows them to contribute and share what they have learned in class. Scribing puts emphasis on listening to what is being taught and then putting that information on paper. At this young age, not all students are able to write. Non-writing students can act as scribers with pictures and scribbles. They are still able to record what they have learned in class.

On Mondays, I ask my students to take out their journals and write about something they did over the weekend. Most of my students will draw a picture and then scribe what the picture is about. Older students wouldn’t draw a picture, they would simply journal what they did over the weekend.

On any other day I would ask my students to take out their journals and write about anything they want. Maybe something they did over the summer, a special event, etc. Students enjoy having the freedom to write about something they are interested in or know a lot about. Student journals do not go home until the end of the school year. This allows me to see students progress throughout the year and parents are also able to see their child's improvement through scribing.

As the school year continues my students become more comfortable with their writing and are ready to create books by scribing. I decided to do a science unit about bees. For the first week I read to my students several different books about bees. We asked several questions and answered many questions as a class.

Each day I had a different student scribe something that they learned about bees. The student that was scribing knew they needed to pay attention, be organized and that the details needed to be accurate. The students that were scribing took pride in their work. By the end of the week we had a book that was produced by my students from scribing. We were able to display the book in our library for everyone to review.

Since students enjoyed scribing they decided they would like to create their own book about bees. They would be able to do this from the notes that were taken from their peers.

I have some students who enjoy using the iPad to scribe. I was able to find a free application that I downloaded to our iPad called Write to the Core Lite. This is a great application for Kindergarteners to help them write with technology. This application starts off with some sentence ideas for students to begin their story. This is really helpful for students to run off with their story. The different options of questions helps students through the steps of writing a paragraph and it also helps them formulate their thoughts.

Each story begins with an opinion. Students are able to upload a picture that they have created or a photo of what they plan on writing about. What I like about this application is that it will read the question aloud for students who can not read. Students simply click on the green button. Once students upload their picture they click on NEXT.

As teachers, we can use the customized feature sentences or create our own questions. Once students decide on what they want to write about they can begin there story. Students begin with their opinion. If they don’t know how to write a word, spell check will help them through the writing process.

Students then continue their story with a REASON.

The next part, students will continue their story with an EXAMPLE.

Students are coming to the end and have to provide their CLOSING.

Once students have inputted there closing they are able to save their story.

Self-Review, students are able to record there story and listen to it back.

Students are able to share their story with their fellow classmates and they can comment on each others story.

Reflection:

The great thing about this application is that students are able to share their story with friends and family by emailing it to them or printing it out for them.

These stories get saved and throughout the year teachers can see the progress of the stories written by students.  Students are always excited to see their finished product.  It's a great accomplishment for them.

The only problem I see with this application is that not all students feel comfortable with using technology. At this age they are still learning how to use technology and navigate through applications. This will definitely be a learning process for all students.