All in the Family Unit Portfolio Presentation Kathleen Kellner

Unit Summary In this unit, students will engage in a variety of activities to discover what is a living and nonliving thing, including how a plant grows and change. Each student will document on a daily basis how a plant grows and change in their life cycle diary. Each group will create its own Movie Maker slideshow on the life cycle of a plant and present it to the class. They will use their ability to observe, record information, and apply it using time and measurement in mathematics. Students will also be responsible for researching and the documentation of their life cycle diary.

Curriculum-Framing Questions  Essential Question Are all living things related?  Unit Questions What is a living thing? What is a nonliving thing? What is a nonliving thing? What do plants need? What do plants need? How do plants grow and change? How do plants grow and change? How can I use technology to document a life cycle? How can I use technology to document a life cycle?  Content Questions What is the life cycle of a plant? What is the life cycle of a plant? What can be used to measure the life cycle of a living thing? What can be used to measure the life cycle of a living thing? How much time does a life cycle take? How much time does a life cycle take?

Life Cycle Project This project will help my students develop 21 st century skills by: Collaborating with peers. Analyzing data about lifecycles and being able to present them to a selected audience.

Gauging Student Needs Assessment Purpose of the Assessment To gather information about what students already know and what they wonder about life cycles. What I want to learn from my students? I want to find out what they already know about the Unit Questions and what they know about technology. (Digital Camera and Microsoft programs ). How I have tried to promote higher-order thinking? I will ask students to find relationships and draw conclusions about life cycles. How the assessment information helps me and my students plan for upcoming activities in the unit? If students have confusion with the technology being used, I can provide more opportunities to practice to become more comfortable with the selected technology. What feedback or additional ideas I’d like? I would like more support with Microsoft Movie Maker. I came across some difficulties that took some time to figure out. That would make me more comfortable for when I need to teach it to 1st graders.

 Find ways to get my students more interested in learning science  Learn about the different kinds of technology my students and I can use My Goals for the Course

Goals for My Students  Work together to create a movie presentation appropriate for a selected audience.  Gather, analyze, organize, reflect, and process information about the life cycle of a plant.  Make connections between themselves, and the lifecycles of other organisms in our world.

Request for Feedback  Ideas for helping students to take more responsibility for their learning  Ideas for other/additional technology resources that could be used in comparison to Microsoft Movie Maker.  Ideas for other animals that could be used in my classroom to document a life cycle.