General Information Project Overview Curriculum Connections Resource Connections Evaluation

  General Information

  Project Overview

Students from the Pod Enrichment class will create a data profile on Newfoundland and post it on our school's homepage. Their goal is to interact with Canadian school's on such islands as P.E.I., the Magdaleine Islands, the Queen Charlotte Islands, and Baffin Island (or some other suitable Arctic site).

It is hoped that this exploration and sharing of information will extend to island communities in the Pacific, Indian, and both north and south Atlantic. Islands such as Iceland and the Hawaiian chain are rich sources of diverse ecosystems.

Students will be required to prepare an updated set of questions based on the responses to their online search. They must also be prepared to supply information to distant sites who wish to join our project.

  Curriculum Connections

Social Studies

The textbook Communities Around the World uses a conceptual approach to content in the belief that the "big ideas" in children's terms remain relevant to life and living although the individual circumstances change.

Three main concepts in the Grade 4 Social Studies program are:

1. Place (location)
2. How People live in the Place (Interaction)
3. How People live Together (Interdependence)

These concepts can be developed by drawing on their experiences of local life, and using them to better understand life in distant places.

None of the nine communities studied in the Grade 4 program are on the island. So we saw this as an opportunity to customize the program to the perspective of a Nfld. student.

Language Arts

This project will develop skills in the following areas:

• reading/interpreting
• online and oral communication
• interviewing/discussing
• writing summaries and reports
• information literacy skills (accessing/retrieving/analyzing/synthesizing/presenting)

Undertaking this project in Grade 4 will have tremendous benefit for our students when they begin the Social Studies program in Pod Five which focuses completely on Newfoundland and Labrador. Their perspective will be significantly broadened from the exposure to island communities world-wide.

Learning Outcomes

1. Students will explore the commonalities and differences that make island communities distinctive, both as a whole and individually.
2. Students will investigate how these factors have affected the economy, the culture, the population base, etc. of each island.
3. Students will learn about the ecosystem of each island, e.g. the number of native vs. introduced species, and the current environmental concerns.
4. Students will use both online searching and email communications to determine the degree of seismic activity and other geological matters of interest, and the factors that dictate climatic conditions in that area.
5. Students will interpret line and bar graphs (e.g. population)
6. Students will estimate distances in kilometres between communities
7. Students will develop community comparison charts - e.g. landforms, location, weather resources, homes/shelter, clothing, food, rules/law/govt., education, transportation/communication, recreation, water, work/jobs

The above outcomes are tied closely to the provincial Social Studies curriculum goals which include:

1. developing an understanding of the elements of the physical environment: the land, its location, its surface features, resources, particularly water, and the use and conservation of natural resources, weather (climate)
2. investigating people's material culture and economic systems: the effect of geographic systems on people's way of living, how people in turn modify and change their environment; the basic needs of people in any community - shelter, clothing, etc. ; work, and ways of making a living from resources production; transportation; communication; technological change
3. understanding how people live together - their social structure, political organization for accomplishing social objectives; institutions for education and religion; attitudes, values and ideology; the changes that occur over time - past, present, and future

The provincial Language Arts learning outcomes are also included in this project.

The General Curriculum Outcomes for Technology Education as stated in the Interim Document are widely addressed in this project. As part of their study of various island communities, they will develop an understanding of modern technology including the technology activities, processes, resource utilization, tools and systems applicable to different communities.

The impact of technology and technological change on self, society and the environment, and the role of information and communications technology will be investigated during the course of the project within several Organizers or Domains of Technological Learning such as Communications, Energy and Power, Biotechnology, and Production.

  Resource Connections

The STELLAR Schools Internet connection is vital to the success of our project in order to obtain access to a sufficient number of island communities to be able to make a critical number of comparisons.

As well, access to the Internet at our school is currently restricted to one computer which is located in a classroom that is often not available to the Grade 4 students. Having Internet access available through the Windows NT server would enable our Grade 4 students to make use of other computers distributed throughout the school.

Other Resources:

• Assorted information books on islands
• Print and electronic encyclopedias
• Atlases

  Evaluation

The Learning Outcomes previously listed will be used to determine the level of achievement by our students along with anecdotal records and observation by the two teachers involved. Students will maintain a current record of their investigation and findings, and emphasis will be placed on the various research skills they employ. Teachers will also be monitoring students' abilities to engage in group decision making. The team dynamic is one of the most important process skills we emphasize in our on-going resource-based units.

We believe that this project will demonstrate to our school the exciting possibilities for creating new areas of investigation that enrich students' current knowledge in important curriculum areas. Recognizing the factors that link our province to communities far away is a meaningful step for students in developing a sense that they are part of the great global community.