Five Lessons for 7th and 8th Graders

 

T. R. Girill
STC Fellow
trg@llnl.gov

These lessons were taught during school year 2000-2001 at Montera Middle School in Oakland, California to seventh and eighth grade students enrolled in the HTML computer class. While students often understand the mechanics of an HTML editor, they do not necessarily understand how to organize information. When do you use an ordered list? An unordered list? A table?

The following lessons emphasize how to code files to best communicate different kinds of information. Each lesson takes approximately 30 minutes. The classroom instructor can build upon this material during the remainder of the week by working with students to teach the actual HTML code. The lessons are:

Lesson 1:Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

Lesson 2: Explain to a Time Traveler How to Make a Phone Call

Lesson 3: Write Your Favorite Things

Lesson 4: Create a Table

Lesson 5: Uncover the Purpose of a Web Site

Lesson 1: Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

Introduce the idea of procedures using an ordered list.

Goal
Have the students write and test their instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to help them understand a procedure.

Classroom Materials
You need the following:

  • White bread
  • Peanut butter
  • Jelly
  • Plastic knives
  • Student notebooks and paper

Discussion
Ask students to explain what a procedure is: a series of numbered consecutive steps performed over a specific period of time. You can refer to the Millionaire program on television and ask students what a contestant needs to do to qualify to play the game. Answer: Fastest Finger, putting given categories into a specified order. (Or use another example.)

Guided Practice
Ask students to write instructions for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, including all the steps in the procedure. When students are finished, ask for two volunteers: one student to read their procedure while the other student follows those exact instructions to make a sandwich. What happens?

Questions
Where was the procedure not specific enough?
Did the procedure cover all needed steps to make a sandwich?
Did the procedure specify on which slice of bread to spread jelly?
What was the first instruction for most students? To wash your hands?
Elicit more discussion about what makes a good procedure, a series of numbered consecutive steps performed over a specific period of time. Who gets to eat the sandwich?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lesson 2: Explain to a Time Traveler How to Make a Phone Call

Introduce the idea of procedures using an ordered list (alternate lesson 1, with an emphasis on understanding audience).

Goal
Have the students write and test their instructions for making a phone call to help them understand a procedure.

Classroom Materials
You need the following:

  • Various kinds of phones, such as cell and digital
  • Some kind of elaborate hat
  • Chalk
  • Student notebooks and paper

Guided Practice
Walk into the classroom without a word, pull out a telephone or telephones of some sort and plunk them down on the teacher's desk for all to see. Pull out an elaborate hat (tri-corner with a feather works well), and place it on your head. Write a phone number on the board. Explain to the students that you are a person from the 18th century and got yanked into the present day by some freaky space-time thingee. The only way you can get home is to talk to someone by phone and that you have to dial the number on the board.

Ask for a volunteer to come to the board to be a scribe. Ask the students to collaborate on writing instructions.

Questions
If students respond with, pick up the phone, ask what's a phone?
If students respond with dial the number, ask what's a dial tone?
What if you were using a cell phone? Would the instructions be different? How?
How to you explain concepts like, area code?
If the procedure wasn't for a time-traveler, how might they be different?
Elicit more discussion about what makes a good procedure, a series of numbered consecutive steps performed over a specific period of time. Emphasize that knowing your audience is an important factor in determining the kinds of instruction to include in a procedure.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lesson 3: Write Your Favorite Things

Introduce the idea of an unordered list.

Goal
Have the students write a list of their favorite things to help them understand the use of an unordered list.

Classroom Materials
You need the following:

  • VCR player
  • Tape of John Coltrane playing, My Favorite Things (not required)
  • Copy of Mary Poppins, queued to her song, My Favorite Things
  • Chalk
  • Student notebooks and paper

Guided Practice
To set the tone of the day's lesson, as students enter the classroom, play Coltrane's My Favorite Things in the background.

Review the previous lesson. Introduce the idea of an unordered list. Ask students to take out their notebooks and pencils.
Ask students if they are familiar with the movie, Mary Poppins.
Explain that you are about to play a song from the movie.
Ask students to listen carefully to the list of favorite things.
Ask students to write down all items from the list.
Ask several volunteers to read their lists.
Now ask students to take time to write a list of their favorite things.
Time permitting, ask several volunteers to read their lists.

Questions
How do you introduce the idea of priority into an unordered list?
What does placing an item first imply about that item? Last?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lesson 4: Create a Table

Introduce the idea of an table as a way to organize and quickly display information.

Goal
Have the students develop a table in a group situation that also helps them to think critically about technology.

Classroom Materials
You need the following:

  • Papers with questions OR
    Write questions on the board
  • Chalk
  • Student notebooks and paper

Guided Practice
Demonstrate how a table works to organize information by displaying different examples from the Internet. Point out the basic features of a table including heading, columns, and cells. Using one of the questions that you've prepared for class or a different practice question, work with students to develop a table, using the board to demonstrate. Here are some sample questions:

If you were going to the moon tomorrow and could take one CD and one Video, which ones would you take? (Suggested table columns: Student, CD, VCR)
If the school could expand the computer program to include more students by cutting back the music program, what do you think the administration should do? Why? (Suggested table columns: Student: For, Against, Why)
If the school could open the computer lab on the weekend to the community and charge a small fee to put back into the school, where do you think the money should go? (Suggested table columns: Student, How to Invest Dollars, Why)

Questions
Allow students, if applicable, to volunteer to work on certain questions together. Students spend the rest of the period working in groups. A scribe from each group reports on information contained in the group's table.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lesson 5: Uncover the Purpose of a Web Site

Give students certain tools to uncover the purpose of a Web site. This material was adapted from Teaching Zack to Think by Alan November, located at: http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/index.html

Goal
Help students to think more critically about the information and Web sites they find on the Internet.

Classroom Materials
You need the following:

  • Internet connection
  • Several suggested URLs for student teams to research

Guided Practice
Can we always believe what we read? Students should always try to be aware of a Web site's purpose. What is it trying to do? Why was it created? Most Web sites are designed to sell services and products, present information, advocate ideas, or entertain. Many sites do several of these at once. A Web site's purpose will not always be clear. Look at http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/index.html (as one possible example).

These materials offer an introduction to the study of Holocaust revisionism by an Asociate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern University.

This sounds authoritative, but is it?

Copy the URL from the site you want to research.
Go the the AltaVista search engine at http://www.altavista.com/
In the area beneath Search for type the following: link:
After the colon, paste the URL you copied in Step 1. Delete index.html at the end of the URL.
Press the Search button.
What happens?

Questions
Discuss the results. What do the linked sites show about the Butz information? Time permitting, divide students into groups and have them research other URLs to understand who are the promoters of a site, and who has a vested interest in the information? What are some scholarly sites that are available for historical research purposes? (Library of Congress, Smithsonian etc.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lessons developed and taught©2001 by Lenore Weiss, Coordinator, East Bay STC Technical Literacy Project.

 

Please send comments to Web weaver: Joseph Humbert

Powered by yvod.com