Thursday, January 23, 2014

Wikipedia Lesson for Research 6th Grade

Our school has a trimester-long class on Research for our sixth graders. It is team-taught by myself and the librarian with an eye towards helping students to understand the wide variety of research tools available to them, and which to use for what. It's fairly heavy on the tech side because, well, that's what our kids seek to use first, but we try hard to show why books are just as important to use. One of the lessons is based entirely on Wikipedia because of its widespread use. I retooled the lesson this year and thought I'd share:


1.Quick mind-map/brainstorm of what they know about wikipedia using Coggle online tool: https://coggle.it/

2.  Compare what we know to short Discovery intro video:

3. Read New York Times Article about senator with false accusations made about him: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_articles/20051205monday.html

4. Fill out worksheet to go along with the article to focus students:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K9pXhfcjBWp5hX-6kPqysZK-O3L22xXZbWObcMu4ync/edit?usp=sharing

There's more I want to do, especially after finding this fascinating article about gender and Wikipedia entries, as well as this short CBS wikipedia video that introduces the founder of Wikipedia.

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