ND Curriculum Initiative

Subject & Standards

Understandings & Goals

Enduring Understanding:1. There are many ways to research a topic using technology.  2. Graphic organizers help writers organize information. Goal(s):1. Students will be able to use a graphic organizer.  2. Students will be able to use OPAC to select their research material.  3. Students will be able to write a research report. 4. Students will be able to share their information with others.

Questions Answered

Essential questions:1. How does a graphic organizer help you in your research? 2. Why is it important to learn about various animals?
Objectives: 1. Students will use a graphic organizer to record research data about their animal.  2. Students will use OPAC, the library online catalog, to find books about their animal.  3. Students will write a report using the information in their graphic organizer.  4. Students will share their reports with their sixth grade buddies.

Assessment

What quiz and test items (e.g. simple content-focused questions that require a single, best answer)will provide evidence of understanding?
1.  Teacher consructed worksheet to be used along with OPAC to check for understanding.  2. Each student is to type in a topic provided by the teacher and write down two books that pertain to that topic.  3. Each student will complete a graphic organizer on a non-fiction story from our reading anthology.  4. Student will successfully complete reading theme test.
What academic prompts (e.g. open-ended questions or problems that require students to think critically and then to prepare a response / product / performance)will provide evidence of understanding? If you wanted to start a research report, how would you begin?
What performance tasks and projects (e.g. complex challenges that are authentic, mirror the real world and require a performance or product) will you include that will provide evidence of student understanding? The students will complete the reading theme test where the students are required to independently complete a written research report.
What other evidence (e.g. observations, work samples, dialogues, student self-assessment)of understanding will you collect?  1. Graphic organizers 2. The final research report 3. A print-out of their OPAC results

Instructional Strategies

Our unit is project-based. The student-created report at the end of the unit is the driving force behind each of our objectives. Students will use a graphic organizer to take a wide variety of information and to enable the child to select the most important information to include in their report. The material found on OPAC will be reveiwed by the student who will select the important information for their report. Using OPAC will develop the students ability to function in a complex thinking environment and it will reflect a work environment that the students will be encountering often in the future. The end product is the animal research report. The students use the graphic organizer and the information that they gathered from OPAC to create an animal report, synthesizing the information into their own words. The students will then share the report with their 6th grade buddies as a way of providing opportunities to share what they have learned.