A day for inquiring!

Today Group 4 conducted their inquiry based lesson, great job group!

They started their lesson with another Word Art to see what the students know. A picture of the Word Art is shown to the right. The students raised their hands and told the teachers which words they have seen before and know the definition of.  They also added a new word , historian! I like how the added a new word and the students noticed as well! They then went over what the word means and what a historian does. After the Word Art pre assessment,  they went over the rules again The teachers added a rule for using the iPads. I think that was a wonderful idea because sometimes students get very excited when technology is in the room and they don't do what they are supposed to be doing on it. After the rules were read, students received their instructions for the lesson which was " Today you are going to be historians! Using WebQuest you will research four historical figures from 1840s.After you have researched the information you will write a biography of one of these people". The image to the left is a QR code in which you can scan and check out the WebQuest that was used !!

The students were then split into 4 groups with one teacher at each group. The groups were Stephen Austin, James Marshall, Sam Houston, and James K Polk.The teachers handed out Graphic Organizers for the students to use during their research. A biography research graphic organizer is a visual display that is used to depict the relationships between facts, terms and/or ideas within a learning task. They form a powerful visual picture of the information and this allows the mind to discover patterns and relationships it otherwise may have missed. It uses visual symbols to convey meaning. Its purpose is to facilitate learning by presenting the most complete picture of all the available facts and the potential relationships that could develop among them. The students began their WebQuests on the iPads and had 20 minutes to do so. Once the timer went off, the students decided within their groups which major accomplishment they will share with the entire class. After the discussion, the sharing began and it went great!After the students did their research they wrote a biography about who they did their research on.