Video

Recorded in PhotoBooth. You can use any built in video tool--even the camera app on your smartphone! Push to students via email, SeeSaw, Google Classroom, Flipgrid or classroom website.

As we get ready to launch students into online research, we first teach them how to sort their wonderings into questions that are researchable right now, those we might answers to later and those questions which we may never find the answers to. This helps kids seek information in a productive manner as they engage in independent inquiry. Recommended research sites for kids include Kidrex.org, Wonderopolis.org, TheKidShouldSeeThis.com, or Kids.NationalGeographic.com. Have students reply via email, Google Classroom, SeeSaw, or Flipgrid, etc. Here's an example of a 2nd grade research page.

A minilesson on why and how we teach students to View to Learn as digital educators.

Now that students are spending more time online we need to make sure they are interacting with content purposefully! Caution your assumptions educators--just because they are referenced as "digital natives" doesn't mean they know how to use online content as a tool for thinking.

In this lesson we teach learners to recognize the many digital features they encounter when working online. Pushing deeper we engage them to understand that all digital features have a purpose; knowing the purpose of each feature helps learners understand the many different ways media communicates information. When we teach students to access all the digital features available to them we multiply the number of entry points for thinking--text, images, video and more all become relevant in building understanding.

Mentor tech: https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/chipmunk/

Follow up with additional time for independent practice using articles about other animals on https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/