Trees and Us

Standards:
Delaware State Science Standards:
1. Identify and list the many different ways in which trees are used by people to meet human wants and needs (i.e., food, shelter, shade, paper products, wood for fuel, furniture, etc.).
2. Recognize that trees are replanted in an attempt to replace those that are cut down.

Delaware Common Core Standards (Language Arts):
W.K.7. Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., explore a number of books by a favorite author and express opinions about them).
W.K.8. With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

ISTE Standards:
3. Research and information fluency
Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.
a. Plan strategies to guide inquiry
b. Locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media
c. Evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks
5. Digital citizenship
Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior.
a. Advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology

Introduction to Lesson: The class will begin the lesson talking about what we have already learned about trees. The teacher will then pose the question, "How are trees important to us?" to the class. The teacher can use a schema chart to write up the class responses. Review all responses when the chart is complete. Before beginning activity one the teacher will need to review what the students learned when completing their ethical use of information lesson. A second chart can be created if the teacher feels the students need that visual reminder.

In this activity the class will conduct some research with the curated sites to discover why they think trees are important to us.

In part one of the activity, the student will be watch the curated videos. They can choose to write or draw some of their findings using paper/pencil/crayons or one of the online drawing sites. When everyone has completed this part of the activity the students will take turns sharing with the class what they found about reasons they feel trees are important to us.

The second part of the activity will be with the written curated sites. The class will view the sites together and create a Trees and Us graphic organizer with the information found on the sites.

The class will use then discuss what the have learned about trees, give feedback to their classmates and ask questions about where the information came from that was researched.

All of the information will be used to create Activity 2.

During this activity the students will be making a video podcast about Trees and Us. They will take the information that they learned and shared in activity one to create the video. The students can work in teams, partners or by themselves to share facts about why trees are important to us. The groups or individuals will each have 1 to 2 minutes to share their information. The groups need to first write or draw (adult can help with dictation if students need help) a script for the video. The teacher will guide them in rehearsing what they want to do while on camera. After the rehearsals the teacher will then record the video. The class will work together using the interactive white board and Camtasia software to edit the video. The video will be shared on our classroom blog. The class will also be sharing the video with our partner class from another state in activity 3.

The teachers of the two partner classrooms (the partners classes are from two different states ours-Delaware and ????? find a partner school) will set up a video chat using either Skype or Google hangout depending on which one works best at the different school locations. The students of both classes will take turns sharing their new knowledge about trees and how trees are important to us. The students will take time to watch each others video and ask each other questions about information presented in the video. This is the culminating part of the lessons so the adults are going to want to make sure that the students fully understand the information they are sharing and are ready to share with the partner class.