CEDO525 Week 4

Strategies – Chapters 7 thru 8: My first experience with collaborative learning was using a webquest with my 5^th grade class a few years ago. I didn’t create the webquest; I found it online, however, I can’t remember where/who created it. The primary task was to analyze 3 different brands of chocolate chip cookies and while working in teams, research the nutritional value of each cookie and create a powerpoint of their findings. This 5^th grade class had some very distinct personalities, so I asked the classroom teacher to assist me with placing the students into groups. While we placed students in groups of four, we did not assign students roles. It was their decision to determine who would be the “researchers” and who would be the “reporters”. Each student had to contribute one slide to the powerpoint. As I could only meet with the students weekly, it took about 7-8 weeks to complete the project. I have to admit, there were some conflicts in the beginning, but I was amazed at how the students were able to divide the tasks and how they helped each other. Some were stronger at the research skills, while others were more skilled on creating the powerpoint. They worked well as teams and were very successful at answering their questions within their groups before coming to me for assistance.

I reinforce reading effort with my students with an “I Caught You Reading” program. Each week I select one student from each elementary class who I “caught reading” in the library throughout the week. I interview these students as to why they feel reading is important and to name three books they would recommend to other students. I currently place their photo and interview on the library bulletin board for all students to see, but I can now see the advantage to posting it to our website as well. The only drawback to this would be that we have many parents who have chosen to not have their students’ photos or names placed on our website for online safety reasons.