Yesterday, on a beautiful and crisp fall day, the fourth graders of room 103 set off on foot to the Burlington Public Library. This was our second trip. Rather than admire the colorful kites hanging from the rafters, or carouse the new books shelf, we were on a mission - a mission to find Waldos.
Our previous visit to the library was in prepartion for yesterday. A lovely librarian helped our class gain knowledge about the information found in resources such as atlases, dictionaries, encyclopedias, biographies, and almanacs. With these new insights, we spent yesterday hunting down the most recent and relevant resources to answer questions like, "What were two of Benjamin Franklin's inventions?" and "What was the temperature in Burlington on Monday?". We could rest assured that our resources were the most recent and relevant when, you guessed it, we found a Waldo!
For each question answered and Waldo found, the students were to cite their source (i.e. author, title, publication date, publishers, and page number). As if this experience were not fun filled enough, each completed question rewarded our class with a new book for our classroom library! In total, we brought close to ten new books back to school with us!
4 comments:
I love hearing what other classes and grade levels are doing because, as we all know, borrowing is a teacher's best friend. Sounds like you guys had a great and rewarding (about ten books, impressive) day at the library. Some teachers might choose to just entertain this activity in their school library but your group brought a whole new learning dynamic into it. Thank you for sharing this experience, and also, thanks for sharing your favorite books as well. One question, what follow up to this activity is there (if any, just curious)?
That sounds like a great field trip. I love hearing ideas where teachers are using their local community for great hands on experiences. Your students will be so much more familiar with the Bellingham library now. I really like this as an idea for a productive and meaningful field trip. I can remember doing a similar activity (but not nearly as creative and fun as this) when I was in elementary school, but our scavenger hunt was only in our own school library. While it was important for us to learn how to use our small, school library, it would have been cool to then link the learning to the community and also get to know our local library. It gives students a more comprehensive view of how libraries are organized. This sounds like a really cool field trip!
This was an extremely fun field trip and the students had a blast! I enjoyed how these researching skills were presented in an authentic and exciting way. Jessica, I also agree that it’s fun and important to see how these skills translate outside of the school atmosphere.
As far as a follow-up activity would go, I think that the class could use more practice in writing citations. Very few students were able to find the individual components to a citation without adult assistance; this was especially true for the publication date and publisher information. I think it would be fun to start them off on a small scale research project as well.
Your class sounds like it is really using its resources in the community. Didn't you say that your class was going on something like 14 field trips this year? That's so neat that the children can really see what is out in their local area and appreciate where they come from. When my students start on their community social studies unit starting in January we might have to talk with your teacher to get some field trip ideas!
Post a Comment