Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Research Task!
When you are 13 with a social life that demands more attention than your homework tasks, then it is highly likely that you are not going to be keen to spend hours trawling through internet sites, or even worse, reading through an old text book to complete a research task! Today's teens are not interested in wasting their "precious" time on an activity that they don't find interesting or relevant. With this in mind, I had the job of creating a unit of work for a small group of Year 8 students who had opted out of studying Japanese or French. These girls signed up for Cultural Studies and in doing so, began a journey of exploration into the world of cultures, rituals and customs.
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Several weeks ago I began the research process for this task myself, after all, if you expect the students to be able to complete a task, you need to be able to do it yourself!
ReplyDeleteI had accompanied a group of students on a cultural tour to Vietnam and Cambodia in the Easter holidays and decided that my travels and the information I learned about life in Vietnam would become the focus of my modelled teaching activity.
The class worked their way their way through a guided inquiry task, collecting information about Vietnam from a variety of sources. This information was summarised on a worksheet. The students viewed sections of a dvd on Vietnam, used text books from the library, surfed the next and intervied students who went on the trip. Of course there was also the opportunity for me to bring in all the artefacts I collected in my travels and wear the traditional Vietnamese dress that I bought in Hoi An.
So true - how students' aren't prepared to give too much time to a task, unless they are a conscientious student. I think even these digilent students would appreciate good research strategies.
ReplyDeleteYour guided inquiry activity sounds fantastic!