Researching smarter

There are still a lot of teachers that are sending children off to do 'research' on Google using one key word.i.e bird (253 million hits later). When they finally find a page that has the information they want, it is invariably printed out, and trawled through looking for information.

This is long, tedious, boring and usually irrelevant!

Become a smart researcher with some of these strategies

1. have at least 3 key words if you are looking for information on birds, what sort of birds are you looking for, what country etc so now the Google search becomes 'bird native wading' and because we want to search for New Zealand Birds we click on  pages from New Zealand.
Now we have 10,400 hits!

2. Open up a mindmap/Graphic Organiser (I like to use Kidspiration or Inspiration, or you can use online versions) Create a simple mindmap






3. Go back to the internet site you have chosen, press Ctrl F (Command F for Macs) type in one of the key words from questions in mindmap like 'eats'

4. The word eat did not appear on my page so I used a synonym such as feed, click the next button to see each instance of the word feed until you see a sentence that will answer your question
5. Go back to your mindmap and type in the information you found
6. Go between the Internet site and the mindmap adding information
7. Add a picture to your mindmap by right clicking on a picture in your internet page, select Copy Image, go back to mindmap and paste (Ctrl V)
8. Don't forget to reference where information and picture came from

Model this way of researching to your class.
Use this model in all curriculum areas.
Become a smarter researcher yourself and your students will follow!

What to do with a few minutes spare?

There are few games that I like to play with students when we have a few minutes spare, you need at least a projector (and laptop) and even better a mimio or IWB.

Free Rice
Free Rice is my first favourite. For every question you get right 10 grains of rice gets donated through the World Food Programme.








The reason it is my favourite is that if you click on Change Subjects you can choose from other subjects.

 I particularly like to do the Geography questions as most children in New Zealand schools have very little idea of where other countries are in the World.






Lemons for Literacy

Then there is Lemons for Literacy. With this site every correct answer helps somebody to read in America. Money is donated by the site creators to purchase literacy materials.

With this site you can click on the speaker symbol to hear the words and meanings.

You can also change the type of game by clicking on the 'Defintion Matching' dropdown menu to choose Word meaning. You can also choose a subject rather than General (some of the choices are Business, Medical, School, travel or hospitality). You can also adjust the level of the words.

Free Poverty
Lastly there is Free Poverty

The goal of this game is to test your knowledge of places on the map. Every correct answer means that freepoverty.com will donate 10 cups of water. The further away from the correct spot and the cups of water decrease, if you are too far away there is 0 cups of water awarded. Unfortunately it does have advertisements on it so check what they are advertising that day before using with your class.

The reason I like using the mimio or IWB is that students can use the pens to interact with words and the maps rather than one person using the computer.










And here is one more I have just found

Free Flour

Free flour used to donate one spoonful of flour to World Hunger, but they are looking for sponsers. You can still play the game for free.

In this game you get questioned General Knowledge questions. Check out what the advertisements are advertising before using with children.

Simple but an effective way of Publishing

A teacher said to me today that her children were always publishing in the same way, in Word with a frame and a title. She wanted to know some different ways to publish. I showed her my slideshare presentation '59 ways to publish'

Journal Publish
We decided to keep it simple and look at only using Word and PowerPoint. We looked at the Journal story idea. When  you look at school journals, most of the pages have pictures in the background and text overlaying the page.

This is an example of two Word pages side by side. The photos cover the whole page, some of the photos have been lightened with the Washout button and then text has been inserted using textboxes. (Remove the background colour and line from the textbox by clicking on the Fill can and selecting 'No Fill' and the outline shape or line button and select no outline or line).

Publishing using PowerPoint Templates

One single PowerPoint page can be used for publishing as well. Open PowerPoint, choose a design theme.

Select a slide layout, type in text, add graphics. Print out single page.

You can adjust the colours of the template by

Mac: Open the Toolbox and choose a colour theme from Document Theme

Windows: PowerPoint 2007 choose from Colours