Our activity this week was simple and straightforward but very fun. After helping with homework for the first half hour, we headed down to the computer lab. Haley and I had arrived a couple minutes early to set up every computer with a desktop icon that lead directly to the website we would be using. This made it very easy to guide the students to the website once they arrived. First, we discussed the weather in Bozeman that day. We asked the kids to make a hypothesis about the temperature outside. Interestingly enough, some students had checked the weather with their teacher earlier in the day and very confidently reported their findings. On the projector, we looked for Bozeman's temperature and weather conditions on weather.com and discovered that the current temperature was higher than the temperature the kids had found earlier in the day. Everyone was shocked, and it was a great opportunity to discuss the reasons for this change. Then, we asked the kids to name places around the world. We looked for the temperature and weather conditions in those places and discussed reasons for differences in weather around the world.
With about 15 minutes left, we had the students click on the desktop icon that brought them to the website we would be using, called Web Weather for Kids. The site had been approved by Longfellow's computer teacher and has some great interactive games dealing with clouds, lighting and severe storms. On the projector, we demonstrated to the kids how to navigate the website and encouraged them the explore the types of weather that interested them. We quickly realized however, that this website was over the heads of many of the first graders, and some of the second graders. We had one kindergardener in the computer lab as well, and she was very lost. We have 2 or 3 struggling readers in Tech Club who were not there that day. But if they had been, I'm sure they would have been frustrated.
We were intending to have the students each write down a few notes about something they learned while exploring the website in order to start typing next week. But we realized that not much was learned and that we had to take a different approach next week. We've been looking at a few different weather websites for kids that can hopefully be used in place of this one.
Overall, it was a good lesson. The students were very interested and engaged and very excited about seeing the current temperature of Billings and Bejiing. At first they were thrilled about the website, but lost interest after a couple minutes of not finding material that was at their level. For the next Tech Club, we'll use a new website.
No comments:
Post a Comment