7th Grade Humanities Connected World ProjectThis is a featured page

Standards Met:

Standard #6. Technology Operations and Concepts.

Standard # 3: Research and Information Fluency

Standard #5 Digital Citizenship.

Standard #4 Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making.

Standard #1: Creativity and Innovation

Standard #2: Communication and Collaboration &

Standard #4 Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making.



Enduring Understanding:


  1. Understand key issues of least one world problem (hunger, poverty, environment, conflict & peace, etc.)
  2. Key issues are connected globally, regionally, and locally.
  3. Recognize their roles as citizens of the world, their regions and their communities and to see how what they do affects others.
  4. Understand that they can contribute to solving the problem, even in some small way.



Essential Questions:

What do people need for a comfortable and healthy life?


GRASPS Task:


Goal: Create an on-line text book of assigned region; create video of assigned global issue; create an action plan for solving assigned global issue


Role: The students are participating in an personal learning network to create real world solutions to real world problems.


Audience: The world


Situation: students will work independently and cooperative. Cooperative work will be virtual and face to face.


Product: blog, wiki, video, action plan

Six Facets of Understanding:


Explain: by blogging, students create a working definition of the region's issues by identifying key elements. For example, what is the main issue with food poverty in Western Africa?


Interpret:Also through blogging, students will make connections to their topics be connecting to previous knowledge and their own personal experiences.


Apply: Use what you've learned to create an on line text book of region(wiki); documentary of issue (video); action plan for self-involved solution (symposium)


have perspective: blogging about emerging understand of region and topic. Also blogging about meta-cognitive awareness: what is my personal learning experience during the Connected World Project.


Empathize: relate to the actual real people in the regions of study (using globalvoices.org to find blogs)


Have self-knowledge: symposium: what is my role in the interconnected world? How can I make a solution--and a solution that I'm part of?


Connected World Project Outline:


At the end of each part of the project, we have identified the NETS Standards that component meets. At this point it feels like every step of the project will demonstrate most of the standards, but minimally, they will include Standard #6. Technology Operations and Concepts.
1) Blog/journalling - Each of the 160+ students in 7th grade will keep a blog, using ideas inspired by Clarence Fisher. We will assign our students one of 19 regions of the world and one of 8 global social issues or problems. We will do this together because we want to make sure that among our 8 classes, we have the students divided into good working groups for the next phases of the project. Each student will work on a different issue for each region. Their blog work will consist of a series of personal reflections/journaling about what they are learning through globalvoicesonline.org, other good websites for MS students to learn about current events and by reading blogs from other countries. This addresses Standard # 3: Research and Information Fluency

2) The second phase of the project is also inspired by Clarence Fisher. Our 160 students will create a link/resource filled 7th Grade online 'hyperText' book about the regions of the world. This will be a resource for next year's students in their regional studies. Students will work online and collaboratively with their regional-counterparts in the various classes. They will work on their section of the wiki - each writing enough about their issues to put together a solid chapter on the region backed up with evidence, examples and sources. One of their required sources will be communicating directly with someone from the region they are studying. This addresses Standard #5 Digital Citizenship. This also addresses Standard #4 Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making.

3) The third phase of the project is based on one of the Flat Classroom projects. We would now group the students by issue, rather than by region. There could be as many as 8 students per issue, so we may divide them into smaller groups for this phase. Each group is responsible for making a 2 - 3 minute (we haven't decided on the length yet) video about their issue/problem. The videos will serve the function of educating their peers about the problem they have identified. Because they will now be working with students studying different regions, they will work together to understand the similarities and differences of how their issues play out in different regions. This will get back to the idea of making connections. They will present their videos to the 7th grade. Standard #1: Creativity and Innovation & Standard #2: Communication and Collaboration & Standard #4 Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making.

4) The final phase of the project will have students working together once again to create a project or action plan that has the kids themselves becoming part of the solution. They will create project ideas/plans to help or address the problem (other than through education) and they will present those ideas at a project symposium to a panel of teachers (maybe experts as well), their fellow students and globally (we're not sure what format to use). This is when students will have made connections between the Essential Questions and the Enduring Understandings. They will have evaluated and synthesized research and information about complex global issues. They will have educated others and finally, they will have come up with a plan that aims to help solve the problem.

This addresses Standard #1: Creativity and Innovation & Standard #2: Communication and Collaboration & Standard #4 Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making.



MrHealy
MrHealy 		Latest page update: made by MrHealy , Mar 3 2009, 1:49 AM EST (about this update About This Update MrHealy Edited by MrHealy

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mscofino UbD Format 0 Mar 2 2009, 12:41 AM EST by mscofino
Thread started: Mar 2 2009, 12:41 AM EST  Watch
Hi Team,

Fantastic work here, but this should be completed in the Understanding by Design format as described in the Project Page. There is a template that we asked all groups to use.

Kim
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