|
|
|
ARE WE THERE YET?
|
 Nancy
Johnson is a 6th grade teacher at Greenwood School in
the Waukegan Illinois School District. She has created
a problem-based learning unit called "Are We There Yet?" |
|
Objective #1:
"One thing that we try to reinforce with our students is researching
information. They need to know that there's a multitude of
sources, and they need to know how to access those sources...
now they do have the skills to be able to research a topic
and realize that there is a multitude of ways to approach
that topic and a lot of resources to do it."
Objective #2:
"The second thing that I really wanted our students to come
away with was how to work together collaboratively and cooperatively...
The students, after each week, were given an evaluation form
that asked how they felt they did as an individual and as
a cooperative group. So, for some of the children, it was
the first time they were ever critiqued seriously by their
peers, so it was really interesting how they reacted to what
the other students were saying."
|
 "The
purpose of the unit was to familiarize the children with
a problem-based learning unit. They were given a problem:
to travel across the United States, visiting cities that
they felt were major tourist areas. While they were in
the cities, they had to make some decisions about where
they wanted to stay, where they were going to eat, and
the sort of things they were going to see." |
 "During
the course of the unit, we wanted the children to have
experiences gathering information, using a variety of
sources, and becoming familiar with other parts of the
United States. We also wanted the students to have some
experience using a spreadsheet and working on their computer
skills, using different resources and tools of the computer,
like a spreadsheet or a word processor." |
 "Finally,
we wanted to teach them how to use a multimedia tool,
in this case Hyperstudio, so we are in the process of
culminating the unit with a Hyperstudio stack to show
where they've been and what they've done. So, the children
would have a presentation that they can give to other
people and also to show their classmates." |
 "The
first thing we had to do was to work on our skills in
cooperative learning, because their grade depended on
what they did individually as well as in a group. So,
the first thing we did was to assign each child a specific
job in their cooperative learning group, and then we
did some role playing on what that job encompassed and
how they could do that job."
|
 "The
children chose the city they wished to start with, and
were given $400 dollars to spend on a hotel, and on
restaurants to eat at, and places to visit. They had
to choose at least two places to visit, and they had
to figure out what the costs for their travel would
be for the gas."
|
 "So,
they chose their city, and did research about where
they wanted to stay, what they wanted to do and what
they planned to see. Once they completed that, they
recorded the information on a worksheet that I had for
them, for each city. Then they wrote up a journal of
what they did in that city, just talking about how they
got there, where they came from, and the routes they
took."
|
 To
individualize the project for each group, Johnson also
created a set of "fate cards". Each day the team would
choose a card, and experience, "just, oh...a little monkey
wrench in the whole deal; realistic things that might
happen to you if you really [went] on a vacation. [We
had] a card for 'road construction', so they had to take
a detour, and spend more money for gas." Other fate cards
were "ran out of gas", "flat tire", or "lottery ticket"
(team wins extra money). |
|
