Writing: Day 2

Writing is going much better than expected. It was nice to simply pull up the file I saved yesterday so I didn’t have to redo the lesson. My kids need constant reminders of what they have learned and visually, since the pages from yesterday are the same as today they form a familiarity with the concepts. Of course once they got started, many realized they still needed more information. This is where this whole Smart Board/Writing process got increasingly interesting.

I need to start by explaining the old process of doing research—step one: go to the library and get a book. Step two—flip rapidly through the pages of the book. Step three—determine that there is nothing useful in the book. Step four—try the Internet instead. Step five—open Internet Explorer. Step six—ask for help because you have no idea what to do.

Well that’s not what happened this time. Kids would ask me if they could look up information on the Internet and after I granted the permission they would proceed to open the Internet browser and do their search. Sure, I had to spell some words for them but after that I didn’t hear from them. I always keep a close eye on kids using the Internet and I hate to use the word astonishing again but that’s how I felt because I saw them systematically evaluating the web pages and finding what we agreed were terrific resources. Now part of this I can attribute to a generational difference. Granted it’s only been 6 years since I started here but each year brings me a more tech savvy group than the last. I don’t think that one can attribute their searching success entirely to their previous exposure to the Internet. No, I believe that after watching me demonstrate search techniques on the SB and doing searches in a guided group fashion, they have picked up on the intricacies of performing a quality web search. At this point, I don’t think about it that much. I search and scan and kind of know what I’m looking for but that’s a hard concept to teach. Instead of teaching it directly, I taught my students how to do an effective search just through modeling. Who knew it could be that easy? Well I was impressed with the things they found. These will be the best researched speeches we have done yet!