Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Research: Insects! Part 2

Alright, after we picked important information from books, I wanted to teach them the absolutely invaluable ability to take notes from a video! With a little preparation and watching the Brainpop Jr "Butterflies" video a few times, I chose 8 important statements and ideas from the video, typed them up, but left a word out/blank in each sentence. I put a word bank at the bottom as a "solution station" for the kids so all kids can succeed.
With the kids, I warned them ahead of time that we will be watching the same video about 5 times so no complaining! The first time I played it, I told them to watch it for fun. The second time, they were in charge of listening for important information which they had to discuss with their tablemates. Of course I had one student represent each table to share one important thing they discussed from the video. After that, the third time they were in charge of telling me when to stop the video when they heard something important. I warned them it was the ONLY time they could interrupt/talk during a video.
Then I passed out the papers with fill in the blank facts. We read over each statement to set a purpose for listening/watching. I introduced the word bank at the bottom and what it was for. Then we watched the movie a fourth time and they were in charge of telling me to stop when they heard the statement or idea in the video. They were NOT allowed to write any answers down during this time. Once the video finished, I let them loose to fill in the blank for each fact INDEPENDENTLY. Most students were very successful and were very excited they "did work like the big kids do." I had them glue the paper in their science journals and draw a diagram of a butterfly.

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