This week, our fifth grade students finished a fun activity locating information and evaluating websites. The students were given a list of ten unbelievable and amazing animal facts from the book Two Truths and Lie (we read part of this book out loud several weeks ago). Nine of the facts on the list were true and one was a fake and it was up to the students to be detectives to find the fake one. The students worked in pairs using an iPad to determine which one of the ten facts was fake. Some of the facts on the list include "some octopuses have three hearts", "scorpions can survive being frozen inside a block of ice", and "bats can have sparkly poop".
Here is the link to the facts we used.
While students were searching for the information, we discussed the importance of checking who the author of the website is. Is the person or organization who published the information an expert? Can we trust them? To determine this, we need to look past the information that is given on the Google results page and actually click on the link provided to find where the information is coming from.
Evaluating websites can be a dry activity but with an interesting topic, it can be fun. The students were so engaged during this activity and one fifth grade boy said "I LOVE library days!".
In other news...
Many of our younger students heard the book One Day in the Eucalyptus, Eucalyptus Tree.
In this Monarch Award book, the boy gets eaten by a snake. Inside the snake's belly, the boy encourages the snake to eat more and more animals until finally, the snake is so full that he burps all of the animals out. The students connected this book to the traditional story about the old woman swallowing bigger and bigger animals and also to The Mitten. We will be voting for our favorite Monarch Award book in March!
In PreK, we learned all about penguins!
Happy Reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment