5th grade-Integrate Thinking, Writing and Outline processing

Lesson Plan

 
Computer Literacy Competencies for Fifth Grade

Pick a content area competency-Example - Social Studies for Fifth Grade

Many other competencies could be integrated here from the information skills and language arts competency strands.

 

Learning outcomes

Students will improve their reading and comprehension skills while expanding their knowledge and skill using web search tools, web conferencing tools, and an outline processor to create a printed document with with basic essay organization. Students will produce a document with basic essay format of beginning, middle and end paragraphs which contain at least five facts learned during this activity. The teacher will model the creation and instant prototyping of a larger document using elements of the students' work.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

Materials/resources

Technology resources

Pre-activities

Students would benefit from already knowing how to write a good paragraph. Students need the basic computer skills of turning the computer on, connecting to the Internet, and word processing. Students have read the assignment passage or essay on United States history. Students have had some initial search experience. Students and teacher need prior tuorial on to the basic features of Word's outline processor: move, create heading, promote, demote, expand, collapse.

Activities

  1. Give out a scoring rubric and discuss it: opening, middle and ending paragraphs, bibliography, five facts. Discuss the level of citation formatting needing, if any.
  2. Ask the questions about the chosen content area:
  3. Divide the class into 3 research teams. Students will enter the chat space on the network application and type Hello, testing the network and their understanding of where to enter information. A list of their names will appear.
  4. Students search by teams: on the web search team use a web browser go to http://www.google.com and enter useful terms; on the book search team, search for library books online via the local town library or any other nearby library (e.g., Hunter Library); on the magazine search team, search through periodical databases provided via NC Wise Owl or other online sources such as Academic Search Premier.
  5. Each student will select one best source by copying the information and pasting it into the chat window after ten minutes of primarily browse reading.
  6. Students will click in the chat window and use the Select All (Ctrl A) command.
  7. Start up Word processor and open a blank document and pasting everyone's comments for the teacher to copy and paste into an instructor's Word document.
  8. Turn on outlining under the View commands in menu bar. Use the outline features to create or promote text for headings and group resources under these headings, the higher order thinking skill of analysis.
  9. Take a grouping and insert a text (non-title) underneath the grouping title which creates a paragraph about that grouping. Repeat for a second grouping.
  10. Delete and elements left over that do not fit those two groupings.
  11. Create an introductory and ending paragraph for those two groups.
  12. Have each student copy and paste one of their groupings back into the chat window.
  13. Discuss the level of detail needed for citation for this assignment so that perhaps inserting (name, date) into the paragraph for each of the sources used or planned for usage; move the citations to the end of the document under a new grouping called bibliography. This completes one model for group collaborative writing. There is one writer.
  14. Add title, name and date to document. Save. Print.
  15. Teacher moves to whole class modeling with computer projector and copies from the chat window and pastes everyone's groupings into a word document. Then with class discussion and the teacher's quick judgment, efficiently sequence the groupings, create opening and ending paragraphs. Explains that bibliography would be created the same way. This makes the teacher the editor, with multiple writers.
  16. Teacher completes the document including bibliography using citation standards for the class at the current point of semester for posting the next day on the class wall along with the writing printouts of all the other students in the class.

Assessment

Supplemental information

Comments

It is important that the students be thinking through the scoring rubric at the beginning of the activity. The following day after the lesson go back into the whole class word processing document with the class and discuss and create a different sequence to the information modeling the activation and deactiviation of the outline processor. The point is that the outline structure is hidden in the document with outlining is turned off but always there to re-use for further editing if activated. The next day return to the Word file again, and create 2 or 3 new groups for the same subgroups, then create an introductory paragraph for those headings. Print this out to put next to the prior whole class document. This document could be returned to repeatedly for further restructuring until a fresh topic is needed to maintain interest.

The assignment can easily be extended by:

Writing, Wordprocessing and Thinking | Lesson by Bob Houghton | September 14, 2007 v1.0