Started a Publisher project...ended up teaching summarizing

Starting off with a new group always presents the challenge of teaching them the basic information that they don't want to learn. There's no way getting around it and these bunch of 7th graders are no different....

they want snap
they want crackle
they want pop

they most definitely don't want read, summarize and learn.

But so sorry, so sad. That's what they have to do. Without a foundation, there can be no building. So we will continue with the boring stuff. Oh, did I say that there are computer animations and Flash movies that illustrate every "boring" point. As I re-read my writing I can sense that I am slightly miffed, but not really because I remember being this age and wanting everything to be fun, so I'm not surprised and I'm not really unhappy with them.. It is a good opportunity for them to take that next step towards figuring out school is about learning and it won't hurt them or kill them to read and learn.

Yesterday I realized though, that they were rushing through the material without learning anything. So today I revised my gameplan and they learned today. I'm using the Intel Journey Inside the Computer website.

It's full of short articles and wonderful information. We're doing the introductory article on computing. I'm having students copy and paste the article into a Word document. Then then are using the Format tool and the Strikethrough feature to eliminate the information that they don't need in their summary of the one page that they are reading. Their goal is to write a 2-3 sentence summary of the page.

Using this strategy, they are NOW reading the article. After they do the strikethrough, they can go back using the Review toolbar and get the highlighter and pick the most important ideas they want to include in their summary....still aiming for a 2-3 sentence summary. In addition, they must look up and include the glossary words in their notes. I'm not sure whether or not this is in the wrong place in the sequence, though. Maybe the glossary words should be in the beginning. I may change that tomorrow.

When all this is completed, students will change font color and write a 2-3 sentence summary of each page and turn their notes into my Assignment dropbox. So I will have 7 summaries. I'm trying to decide how many glossary words they should use in those summaries....I don't know if I should require them using the words or not. Hummmmmmmmmm I 'll have to keep thinkin' on that one.

Anyway, I know this is going better and I'm more pleased with the outcome. It's a better lesson. And the bonus of it all is that as their computer teacher, I'm teaching more Word tools before I start the Publisher project.....which was the whole purpose of reading these Intel sites to start with!!!! Ironic isn't it!!!!

Comments

[Susan Geiger]

Hi,
You've articulated in a very personal way the frustration many of us feel with the--"cut-and-paste" approach to web research. I'd like your permission to quote your post for a program I'm helping prepare for Internet Librarian in Monterey, California in Nov. http://www.infotoday.com/internet@schools/
http://www.infotoday.com/internet@schools/program.shtml#TrackC