How to participate to Roots Project
REGISTRATION DATA: (Preparatory work - 2 hours)
1. Register to the project by the Application form or by email to the coordinator
2. Join to the Global Kidlink What are my Roots FB Group and write a short post to introduce you. Meet the teachers involved in the project. Who will be your partners?
3. Become a member of Kidlink (free of charge) to get username and password to work in Kidspace
4. Introduce your school/group by creating a School Introduction Page under Students Pages 2014-15.
Point 5 (To Register your students) is OPTIONAL. You can register them later. Read here: Why and How to register my students
FOUR BASIC PHASES
1. Students Activities
2. Students Registration
3. Students works Publication.
4. Global Dialogue
1. STUDENTS ACTIVITIES
Teachers display to their students the School Introduction Page created by the teacher under Students Pages 2014/15 and invite them to add more details to promote a better knowledge among the students.
STEP 1a. Meet my Family. - The students draw their Family Tree (2 Lessons + Homework)
Implementation of a family tree. Students will gather information by asking relatives for names, birthdates and birthplaces of members of their family. They can also collect information about relatives that you would like to add to their Family Tree and add them as comments to the Tree. They can realize their Family Tree with any graphic technique they prefer. (If already registered, students can also display the Tree in their personal pages.)
STEP 1b. By Land, Sea or Air. - The students share information and graphs about the original homeland of their family and the reasons why they might have moved to another region or perhaps chose to stay where they are.
- Students brainstorm the reasons why people leave a country and why people want to stay in a country.
- Display the reasons on a chart in the classroom. (Put it online ?)
- Take a survey of your class and find out how many have moved to your area from another city or country. Graph the information you find. Share the results
- Place flags on a world map to identify countries from where students or their families arrived. Add it to your page
- Students write a descriptive text about the country from where they or their families arrived (map, geography, traditions history).( Put it online ?)
- Students Learn a dance or song and a recipe from another culture and share it
STEP 1c. Looking back in time. -
- How did your family heat their house, cook and wash? How was it before and how is it now. Why? Make a poster called "Then and Now" and include pictures or photos of older appliances as well as pictures of newer appliances.
There are many discussion points that you can start and carry on with your students to explore the issues. We want to present some, but you can find additional input to better discuss in deep with your students in Resources Page.
2. REGISTRATION - Look at Why and How to Register my students
3. STUDENTS WORKS PUBLICATION - Read here how your students can publish their works and post comments
4. GLOBAL DIALOGUE - The global dialog is the main part of the project. It is important to let the kids dedicate time to do this. Do not let therefore the creative part takes to long time. Read more in Kidlink Dialogue
One dialog is done by writing comments in the other students pages. Write eg your conclusions about the differences and similarities you have seen. or write an evaluation of that page. What do you thing is missing in the page? What questions should have been interesting to raise? It is important to be kind and constructive making good suggestions.
Another dialog can be done organizing eg a skype chat. Prepare questions you did not find answers to in the students pages. It is important to choose a few students who will be ambassadors for your class.
How to support your students dialogue
In "Kidspace", the dialogue is done by students when they interact with each other by inserting comments in the pages of their partners with the approval of their teachers, or by talking in Skype.
- Teachers have to encourage their students to visit the pages of their partners in the project. On the bottom of each Kidspace page you can click on the nickname of the page's author.
- Students have to use the option [Add Comment] in order to a success of the project and to leave public messages in their partners'pages.
- Sometimes comments can be very trivial, with only a word like e.g. "Cool" or "Wow"... but kids should be helped to built better relationships with a more structured dialogue. Look at Conversional writing - colloquial tone at Dialogue Teory.
- Students can dialogue by chat too. For each project is possible to organize a moderate chat in Skype where students involved in the project can talk.
- Teachers can support their students'work, by writing in their pages comments with suggestions to improve what they do or to encourage
Let your students have dialogue and give time for this. The project will profit from it!