 Learning through the Library Best Practices Archive
Title: Inventors/Inventions
Grade: 5
Content areas addressed: Science, social studies, math, art
Site: Orchard Elementary School of Science
Address: 4200 Bailey Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44113
Contact: Faye Glick, Library Media Specialist
Phone: (216) 631-1854
E-mail: fglick@raex.com
Web site: Not available.
Information literacy standards addressed:
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Standard 1: The student who is information literate accesses information efficiently and effectively.
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Standard 2: The student who is information literate evaluates information critically and competently.
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Standard 3: The student who is information literate uses information accurately and creatively.
Unit objectives:
- Pursues information related to personal interest.
- Promotes critical thinking and problem-solving.
- Participates effectively in groups to pursue and generate information.
- Uses technology as a tool to achieve goals.
- Accesses and uses information efficiently and effectively.
- Evaluates the information critically and competently.
- Assesses the quality of the products of their own information seeking.
Description:
Relation to School/District Goals
This unit fits in with the following district and school curriculum priorities:
- Language arts--using reference materials, completing student research projects, writing across the curriculum.
- Math--reading and creating charts, reading and analyzing statistics.
- Social studies--locating longitudes and latitudes on maps, identifying locations of continents and countries, using keys and scales.
The inventors/ inventions project was planned as a part of the nationally developed Invent America program being implemented at the school. In preparation for this project, students brainstormed various inventions they wanted to study. The teacher then worked with the library media specialist to compile an expanded list of inventors and inventions that included the student contributions.
Focus
A major purpose of this project was to have students apply the various math, social studies, and language arts skills they had learned in earlier lessons. We also wanted students to understand how and why inventors came to make their discoveries. We hoped they would see these inventors as diverse people who questioned and took risks in bringing forth something new to benefit our world.
Learning Process
In the first part of the project, students were paired with partners according to their interest in an inventor. In each team, one person identified events in the inventor's life that led to his/her inventions and the other partner investigated the invention in depth. During visits to the library media center, the students decided on the questions and types of information that might be important to their research and gathered facts using print and CD-ROM encyclopedias and various books. Each team evaluated his/her partner's information and synthesized their new knowledge in a cohesive written report.
The second part of this project reinforced skills previously taught in the library media center. Teams identified and located the capital city of the country in which their inventor was born. Using an almanac and an atlas, they also determined the continent, hemisphere, latitude, and longitude of the inventor's birth country. Each student also used an encyclopedia to gather and identify several relevant and interesting facts about thee capital city to be incorporated into a paragraph.
In part three, students selected two other cities in their inventor's country. Using the scale of miles on a map of the country, they calculated the distance between the capital city and each of the cities they had chosen. As teams, students created a chart or graph to display the populations of all three cities. The final portion of this project required partners to draw the country's flag and to find information about the meaning of the colors and the symbols of the flag.
Assessment
The teacher and library media specialist used informal observation and feedback techniques throughout the project to guide students as they conducted their research and produced their reports and charts. Student achievement was measured by using a rubric that was shared with students as they began their work. Using this rubric, students were able to assess their own progress throughout the project. At the end, the rubric was also used to grade the assignments.
Date submitted: 10/3/97; updated 5/25/98.
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