Social Awareness and Research Skills Crash Course

6th Grade Social Awareness Research Project
A (10 session) course designed to teach research skills, higher order thinking and acceptable use of technology in the middle school.

What:

In the beginning of the year, we teach a  10 Session “crash course” meant to prepare our new 6th graders to be efficient and effective users of technology in our BYOD Middle School.  The course focused on these major technology and content related concepts:  

• Research skills and the use of Google Search Operators
• Writing an effective research question
• Storing and citing sources using Noodle Tools
• Effective use of Google Drive to create, store, and share files with teachers and classmates.
• Creating an effective presentation and presenting with the class.
• Teamwork & Collaboration Skills
• Appropriate and effective classroom use / class routines and expectations.
• Community service / Tikkun Olam (Jewish Value of Restoring the World)

Why?

Our new middle school students lack many basic technology skills including: researching, citing sources, sharing and working in Google Drive / collaborative documents, appropriate use (distraction free zones.)  Also, being that our middle school is a BYOD environment, our students lack the appropriate use of having  device with them at all times.  We wanted to create an experience for our students that would help them use their devices appropriately, effectively and efficiently.  

For us, in our middle school, 6th grade at my school is also a big year around the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam (Restoring the World) as our new adolescents prepare for the b'nai mitzvah the following year so we wanted to create something that would hit that theme as well in an effort to help our students further develop empathy.

How:

This whole process has to begin with building background knowledge, or schema.  We invite students during the first three sessions to explore issues in our community as they relate to Jewish Values. During these sessions students conduct appropriate research using operators and other advanced tools.  They also store their citations using a tool that we love at our school, NoodleTools.  

Once students develop a schema and see some of the issues that our community is facing, they are required to work collaboratively to write a research question.  Students complete this work on Google Drive and share among each other as well as their teachers.  To me, writing a great research question is the most important part of this crash course.  With google and other tools, finding information is so easy, I don’t care that my students can type something into google and get an instant answer to spit back out to their classmates... I want them to seek and find information which will make them think, wonder and remain engaged.  

We allowed them to use the word community as freely as possible when conducting their research.  What we did not want, was research questions that simply stated “how can we help animals in the shelter” or “how can we help sea turtles” or “how can we help the homeless”  These are easy questions to answer.  A 7 year old can do it without much thought or research.  We wanted them to take a deeper dive into the issue.  You can access the “writing a research question” document I used by clicking here.

Our students wrote some pretty amazing research questions and found some pretty amazing information.  They are even using some of their knowledge to shape a B’nai Mitzvah project which they are required to complete.  Here are just a few example student written research questions:

• How can tutoring under privileged children in reading and writing impact their future and increase their chances of getting a job later in life?
• What effect does art have on helping hospitalized children feel better?
• How does PTSD affect veterans and how can charities/organizations help them?
• How did negative attitudes and opinions about Israel evolve, and how might we change people’s thinking?
• How is the problem of homelessness being solved by habitat for humanity?

Students loved working on this project.  It was a topic of their choice which is always a great motivator them and they also got to use their devices in class, another huge motivator.   It also made them think about other people and issues facing our planet.  

Notes:

This project was originally incepted a year ago.  It was  a huge success last year, however this year, we more explicitly added the idea of social awareness to a cause to lead them into their B'nai Mitzvah project and school service hours.  Also, last year we introduced 3 different pieces of technology for the students to share their findings using a medium of their choice.  While this opened it up to much more creativity, students rushed through their research and did not adequately have time to carefully research a cause.  This year, we thought it was much more important to focus on the research component so we required students to make a google slide show (something they were already familiar with.)  We did, however, reinforce best practices of creating slide show that is engaging to an audience and easily visible to the class.  A copy of the final project expectations can be found here.

Next Steps:

This year, we are building on this 6th grade experience for our 7th graders.  The hope is they will chose the same issue they did last year and we will take the idea of social awareness to social justice.  We are currently planning a 12 session long curriculum that will build upon these skills in a social justice class that will focus on using social media and web tools for good.  Students will write an action statement, start a blog, create a meme, an infographic and ultimately a one minute PSA.  They will use their blogger accounts and school youtube channel, hash tags, index features and other tools to further bring awareness and justice to the social issue they are studying.  

Summary:

Although this is a class that was taught in social studies and English class, the benefits are ringing through in all of the 6th grade classes.  They are using the research methods to help them in Jewish History, the acceptable use principles in math and science; and the idea of writing a research question to apply to their work in science class.

Teaching students that google (and other search engines and tools) is much more than a place to find an answer; moreover it is a place to become inspired, to discover, to become inquisitive and feel empowered to change the world.  That is how we should teach students to research.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about this project or would like more of the resources.