Stage 4 Final Product

All of the student groups created final movie products. They capture the learning and creativity of the students.

Here is a sample from the Grade 6 French Immersion class.

Stage 4 Final Product

Here is a sample from the Grade 5/6 class. 

more Stage 3 Student Research Work

The images below represent the continued work of the students in their classrooms. Referring back to their initial storyboards and research questions, they revised and edited their product storyboard to plan their audio/visual sequences for their final movie. They focused on the 'big idea' questions to develop a movie them related to biodiversity and a persuasive depiction of a scientific issue. 

Stage 3 Student Research Work

Below are images of the students back at school working in the Library lab. With Media Services personnel on hand, the students learned to import and upload their images. They were also taught how to use Audacity, a software for audio capture, to which they uploaded their audio files from the iPods. 

Stage 2 Student Research Work

Below are images of the student field trip. After touring the different exhibits related to Biodiversity and enjoying the 'Action Earth' presentation, the students had the occasion to interview the scientists. We were fortunate to have both a French-speaking and an English-speaking scientist available to us. As individual interview teams asked their questions, others sat and readied their equipment for their turn with the scientist. 

Stage 1 Student Research work

Below are a few images to represent early research work with the students. 

Both classes, the Grade 5/6 English group and the Grade 6 French Immersion group, explored the 'QMatrix' as an organizational tool to generate questions for our study topic, Biodiversity. Small groups of 4-5 students developed both simple and 'big idea' questions to create a list of questions that they might ask of the scientists at the Science Centre. 

As the range of questions began to grow, we discussed strategies for organizing the sequence of questions in order to best prepare for the interviews. When the students regrouped for interview trios, they compiled questions that would suit their particular interests for learning about Biodiversity issues. From the class questions, then, they developed a sequence of questions for each interview team. 

more student learning

Prior to the field trip, the classroom teacher will move the students into Stage 2 of the Research Process, to consider the sources of information that they'll be gathering. The students will learn about the differences between primary sources and secondary sources of information. (See the related link in the blog menu.) Their interviews of the scientists will be their work with primary sources. Their involvement in the auditorium program and their visit to the exhibits will be their work with secondary sources.

The field trip to the Ontario Science Centre will involve a 45 minute program in the auditorium, focused interviews with related scientists and a visit to related exhibits. All the while, the trios will be recording interviews and their own oral commentary, capturing images of the exhibits and written exhibit descriptions and recording the sequence of both on the storyboard. The teachers, Teacher-Librarian, Instructional Leader and Media Services instructor will all be in attendance to supervise and support their work.

Following the day of the field trip, the students will work in the lab to create a slide show. The Media Services instructor will help them to upload the audio recordings and the visual images. He will then teach them how to use the slide show software. With his support and that of the teachers and Instructional Leader, the students will create their slide shows and burn them to a CD. This step represents Stage3 & 4 of the Research Process, as they organize the information gathered in order to create a final product of their learning.