Thursday, November 29, 2012
"We Give Books" Website
I came across the website, "We Give Books", www.wegivebooks.org the other day and it is a wonderful thing! It almost seems to good to be true. You can join (it's free) and you can read digital books. Once you complete reading the book they donate a book (a real, paper one) to a child. Incredible! It's the philanthropic arm of Pearson Publishing, and according to their website: We are dedicated to delivering award-winning books empowering you to read and share beautiful stories with children in your life...The We Give Books team works upfront with each non-profit literacy partner to identify the kinds of children's books that best fit their program needs. Some of the same great books you can read online will be donated to our charity partners through your reading efforts. We also donate others they request specifically for the young people they serve.
Check it out!
Monday, November 5, 2012
Website Evaluation Instruction
Every year I teach students to evaluate websites so that they will become better internet users. I watched a news story in September on ABC News about a man who set up 2 fake websites to cash in on the political conventions and collected thousands of dollars. And I thought, hurray! This would be a perfect, real-life example of how you need to evaluate information on websites.
Part one of the lesson we cover the parts of a website (header, body, footer), where to look for the name of the organization, authority, currency, contact information, etc. I use several local organizations' websites for this part (Chehaw, Flint Riverquarium, Albany Museum of Art, City of Albany, Dougherty County Public Library) and students locate the aforementioned information. Then we discuss what we found.
This year I started part two of the lesson by going to this website, http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/21/ABC-News-Fake-RNC-And-DNC-Websites-Highlight-Internet-Campaign-Donation-Fraud which covered the ABC news story and had links to the 2 fake websites (one for the Republican National Convention and the fake Democratic one). We looked at both of the fake websites and looked in vain for a physical address, phone number or any names. Then we went to the GOP website and located immediately the full contact information.
The meat of this second part of the lesson is to compare two websites about endangered species. I tell the students that I googled the key words "endangered species" and chose two of the listed results. We then compare them (I've had students work in pairs and done it as a group with the pairs sharing laptops and I think I prefer the group model). One was created by 5th grade students http://www2.lhric.org/pocantico/5thgrade99/animals.htm and the other is Sea World's InfoBook Index website http://www.seaworld.org/animal-info/info-books/endangered/index.htm .
One of the fifth grade teachers mentioned the commercial he had seen lately about not believing everything you see on the internet. I remembered the commercial and wished I had gotten a link to the commercial. Another teacher said it probably was on You Tube and it was and here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmx4twCK3_I . I definitely will use it to introduce the idea next time I teach the lesson!
Here's a cartoon from Fitz & Pirillo (I tried to find their website and couldn't, so I copied the image from another website (www.blaugh.com). It would be a good one to show to students (it covers 2 concepts...plagiarism and internet reliability).
Part one of the lesson we cover the parts of a website (header, body, footer), where to look for the name of the organization, authority, currency, contact information, etc. I use several local organizations' websites for this part (Chehaw, Flint Riverquarium, Albany Museum of Art, City of Albany, Dougherty County Public Library) and students locate the aforementioned information. Then we discuss what we found.
This year I started part two of the lesson by going to this website, http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/21/ABC-News-Fake-RNC-And-DNC-Websites-Highlight-Internet-Campaign-Donation-Fraud which covered the ABC news story and had links to the 2 fake websites (one for the Republican National Convention and the fake Democratic one). We looked at both of the fake websites and looked in vain for a physical address, phone number or any names. Then we went to the GOP website and located immediately the full contact information.
The meat of this second part of the lesson is to compare two websites about endangered species. I tell the students that I googled the key words "endangered species" and chose two of the listed results. We then compare them (I've had students work in pairs and done it as a group with the pairs sharing laptops and I think I prefer the group model). One was created by 5th grade students http://www2.lhric.org/pocantico/5thgrade99/animals.htm and the other is Sea World's InfoBook Index website http://www.seaworld.org/animal-info/info-books/endangered/index.htm .
One of the fifth grade teachers mentioned the commercial he had seen lately about not believing everything you see on the internet. I remembered the commercial and wished I had gotten a link to the commercial. Another teacher said it probably was on You Tube and it was and here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmx4twCK3_I . I definitely will use it to introduce the idea next time I teach the lesson!
Here's a cartoon from Fitz & Pirillo (I tried to find their website and couldn't, so I copied the image from another website (www.blaugh.com). It would be a good one to show to students (it covers 2 concepts...plagiarism and internet reliability).
Opinion Writing Lesson
One of our fourth grade teachers asked me to help the students with writing an opinion essay. The CCGPS states - ELACC4W1: Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and the students are to refer back to the text. She said they were having difficulty with this task. I found a website that had a good handout/structure, "Write An Opinion Essay" http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/magazines/scope/pdfs/SCOPE-011011-REPRO-19.pdf
I liked the format, which I used loosely!
The problem was coming up with something we could read fairly quickly that would provide us with something to have an opinion on! I came up with several subjects (texting and driving, political candidates, European exploration in the new world, Japanese internment camps in WWII, etc). Finally...a eureka moment! Pick out a short book to read and one just jumped into my mind (having used it before), Why War Is Never a Good Idea by Alice Walker.
I liked the format, which I used loosely!
I read the book to the class and created a t-chart (on a large dry erase board) and told them that they would agree or disagree with the statement. Then they gave me specific reasons if they agreed with the idea (that war is never a good idea) that referred back to the text. Some of the students disagreed and gave me good reasons which I also recorded.
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