After the chaos of the stock market game we have floated into the calm waters of the Internet research unit. You might think that Internet research would be a troubling and risky project with fourth and fifth grade students, but it actually goes quite smoothly. They get to choose their own topic, subject to my approval. Many of them choose predictable things like football players or spider monkeys or Walt Disney or the care of hamsters, but we get the occasional interesting one like D-Day or knights or the sinking of the Titanic. They spend three weeks doing the research, using a variety of sources like Wikipedia and Google searches, while we discuss Internet safety and how to evaluate web sources. My favorite strategy here is using the Pacific tree octopus site as an object lesson.
Then they take their notes and make them into a PowerPoint presentation. The whole thing takes six or seven class periods, but it holds their interest because they chose their own topic. It works well for students of different abilities, who get as far as they are able, and it works well as a peg for hanging discussions about Internet safety and good research strategies. Now if I could just discourage the one girl who is determined to study Hello Kitty cellphones...