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Going Global with Inquiry and Google

How does your physical location affect your opportunities? This year at Melbourne Girls Grammar, a goal of the Middle Years staff has been to plan and deliver authentic inquiry experiences to our students. Our aim is to explore new content knowledge, develop 21st-century learning skills all whilst incorporating new technologies to provide innovative learning experiences. This led to a Year 5 inquiry unit investigating the essential question, “How does our physical location affect our opportunities?”

We began with a confronting immersion task to encourage our students to consider the experiences of other children around the world. This enabled them to generate wonderings to drive our unit of inquiry (see picture). The students subsequently investigated the United Nations Rights of the Child to identify what opportunities all children should be afforded irrespective of country of birth.

We enlisted the help of our information services team to come to Year 5 and deliver specialist lessons on how to perform effective searches using our library’s online databases, as well as the pro’s and con’s of using Google to gather information. All students were encouraged to gather factual information about Australia such as imports, exports, climate, literacy levels, average household income etc which could be used as a means of comparison with a chosen country later in the unit.

After developing an understanding of the opportunities afforded to adults and children in Australia, the girls were challenged to choose a focus country outside of Australia to investigate and make comparisons. Students developed a geographical and social understanding of the country to determine if the opportunities afforded to, particularly children, were in line with the UN Rights of the Child treaty. They were specifically asked to attribute cause and effect; How were opportunities affected in that country and why was this the case? The girls loved comparing the physical size of their chosen country with Australia using The True Size website. They also had the opportunity to explore their country through pictures using the Pegman feature in Google Maps.

One of the most important and challenging elements of the unit was the “Call to Action”. An opportunity for girls to use their new knowledge to make a change. Students contacted outside agencies such as charities, businesses and even reached out to politicians. The girls wanted to suggest changes to laws, not only in other countries but also here in Australia. After learning about policies towards immigration and same-sex marriage in Canada and Sweden, they felt Australian laws could be improved.

The unit culminated with students either individually, or in pairs, presenting the information they had found. The girls were encouraged to present their information using Google Slides using a range of mediums, including; images, tables, graphs, and keywords. The Screencastify extension was then utilised to enhance their slide deck with students recording using their voice to create an immersive presentation for their audience. This was a time-efficient way to develop their presentation skills, without having to observe each group presenting.

Each presentation was uploaded into a Google MyMap which was used as an authentic showcase of learning which could be shared with parents. Some students even created Google Forms to share and test the audience’s knowledge after viewing their presentation. Students completed self and peer reflections on their learning which were also uploaded into the MyMap to give a complete picture of the learning journey of the students throughout the unit.

In summation, I believe student engagement is the gauge of the success of any lesson, or unit, in schools. Student Agency in this unit was at a premium. The investment in answering the essential question enabled authentic knowledge construction, opportunities for self-regulation, exploration of areas of digital citizenship, ICT for learning and effective communication. All of these skills will help our students succeed and adapt to the future world of work, whatever that might look like.

 

Rory McCaughey
Year 5 Teacher
Melbourne Girls Grammar School
Australia
@MrMac85

 

 

 

[themify_button bgcolor=”blue” size=”large” link=”https://www.amazon.com/Bring-World-Your-Classroom-Google/dp/1945167416″]Learn more about how to bring the world to your classroom[/themify_button]

 

 

 

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Choose Your Own Story with Google Forms

We’ve all heard about Choose Your Own Adventure activities – either the wildly popular books from the 80s and 90s or using Google Forms with logic branching or Google Slides with hyperlinks among slides. They’re fun and engaging for students, but there’s one problem with them.
They are passive experiences. All students do are point and click (or turn to a specific page). You could make an argument that the student have to think critically to make a choice, but sometimes they will just click on whatever they want without a second thought. In 2017, this isn’t good enough. We need students to be problem solvers, with concrete reasons of why they’ve chosen their choices.
While I was out of the class battling cancer, I stayed in contact with my students through Google Classroom. We wrote back and forth, and after a few weeks of this, it got stale. We needed a refresher. I thought back to my days of reading Choose Your Own Adventure books and pondered how I could amp up a Slides template.
What I decided on is more concretely detailed here, but to summarize, I used Slides to present them with a choice. Rather than clicking on a link to continue through the story, they would type their choice and explain why. The following day, I pasted in the next part of their story based on their choice.
It was an enjoyable activity, but it required a great deal of time on my part to cut and paste individual slides into each student’s story. Now that I’m back in the classroom (and in remission from cancer,) it’s not feasible for me (or any classroom teacher) to do that way. There had to be a better way.
Using Google Forms, you can give each student a choice and use “Go to Page Based on Response” to direct their story to the next stage. This essentially automates it all for you. I also found it was much easier to develop a story and various options using Forms versus Slides. In the Slides version I made, there were 8 possible outcomes.
In less time and effort, I was able to develop 16 different endings with Forms. Having more outcomes results in a much better replay value. My students worked on the activity all week, and still none of the students were able to discover all 16 outcomes. I also left the endings open-ended, so students could finish out the story in a manner that they desired.
However, I still want students making cases for why they chose their outcome. To accomplish this, I added a “Paragraph” question on the Google Form after each choice. Turning on data validation, by clicking on the three vertical dots next to the “Required Question” slider, allowed me to set a certain character limit that students had to meet before they could advance to the next part of the story. I found that 150 characters was a good amount for my fourth graders.
There is the possibility that students can just hold down the spacebar to meet the character limit (or repeatedly type “very, very, very” as one of my students initially did,) but that results in a conversation with the student, along with a self-reflection on the teacher’s part. Did they not find the activity engaging? Were they unhappy with a choice they made? In my experience, discussing with the student that you’re interested in their thoughts more so than them just hitting a character limit helped motivate them to put forth the effort.
Here’s an example of a setup activity that you can use with Google Forms.
Congratulations! It’s nearly summer vacation. As a reward for your dedicated service, you’ve won a free cruise on the SS Salvaje. Simply click here to finalize booking! (Seriously, click on the link and then come back to this post. I promise it’s not a scam.)
In your classroom, you can use the SS Salvaje activity by giving the students the shortened link (bit.ly/SSCYOA) or you can develop your own, by using this template (clicking will make you a Force Copy). On the template, everything is linked to the correct sections, so just make sure you follow the directions within. If you make your own, you’ll be able to see your students’ responses, which you won’t be able to do if you use the pre-made one.
I asked my students if they enjoyed the Google Slides activity we had done while I was out during medical leave more or if they preferred the Google Forms one. Nearly 90% of the students said they preferred the Google Forms version, for a variety of reasons:
  • “Because that it is more fun because it takes less time because we type what we want to do and you type back.”
  • “I liked the SS Salvaje more than the winter expedition [the Google Slides version] because when you choose what you want to do and write about it, you get a new one right after it.”
  • “The SS Salvaje because you had to write a certain amount of detail and that helps in making more detailed writings which will help when we’re in older grades.”
  • “Because it is longer and it has more endings than the other one. Also it has more creative adventures than the winter one.”
A huge theme in their responses were that they enjoyed the immediate feedback and progression on the story, which is something that is very important to the “YouTube generation.” As a teacher, I was thrilled to see one student recognized that asking for more detailed writing would help them grow as writers as they enter middle school and beyond.
I constantly want to improve on activities in my classroom and transfer the role of creator to my students. One of my feedback questions was to see if the students wanted to make their own. Nearly all the students said that they would want to, so we’ll be embarking on that journey soon… just as soon as my students finish escaping from the creatures in the pool or the problems in the boiler room.
 
 
 
Fourth Grade Teacher
Fredericksburg, VA