Miss Zhang's Inquiry Based Learning Project


Qin Wang & Junyue Zhang

Unit: Life Changes  

·       Persistent Issue:  What are the impacts of technologies on our lives?  

·       Central Question: How do technologies change our life in different ways?

Lesson 1: Grabber and Introduction

One 75-minute class period


Introductory Grabber: Instructor gives the handout of the article “7 Ways Technology Has Changed Our Lives Forever” to the students and shows the class the video about how technology changes our lives. Then asks students get into groups of 3 or 4. Let students discuss about the article they read and the video they watched in class. Then share the thoughts to the rest of the class.

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-9FaJPhFxQ

Article:

https://www.babble.com/tech/7-ways-technology-has-changed-our-lives-forever/


Introduce the Central Question: The instructor asks students how do they feel about the video? What are students’ opinions? Which statistics impress students the most? After the instructor throughout those questions, instructors could give some examples about our daily life changes due to technology to the students as a hint. Then gives students the central question to keep in mind in order to do the following project.


Lecture: Instructor presents an overview lecture of technology changing our daily life and improved our life quality. Students are informed that for the next several days they will be doing the research on how technology changes our life in different ways. In the end, student will decide which fields do they want to do research on and prepare a presentation on the topic they chose.

Culminating Activity

Presentation Activity

The structure for this activity is adapted from an activity developed by the Teachers' Curriculum Institute

Two 75-minute class periods


Introduction: When students enter the classroom, the desks have been set up in a semicircle for students to sit for the presentations, and also set up a whiteboard for students to use. The instructor explains that students will give presentations in the class to share their thoughts.

Lecture: In the lecture, instructor is going to explained the article more thorough, especially on the specific impacts, such as, 1. Technology has killed the greeting card. 2. How we date. 3. How we share and so on. Also give some accurate examples, for the question ‘How we date?’—If a group cannot meet at the same time to complete the group work because of different schedules. They could build a google doc. Share the link with group members and they can also use GroupMe to contact each other as a group. These two tools are provided good explanation of How we date!


Activity Overview: Students will take a piece of paper to record what they learned from the presenters during the presentation, and after each group present, students will discuss their thoughts with the presenters. Also students will be asked to write a paragraph summary of what they learned from today’s presentation.



Grading Rubric for Presenters

Rubric:

Total score: 20 points

How did the presenters express their thoughts on their topic?             5         4          3           2             1

·      

Do all the resources relate to their topics?                                           5         4          3             2            1

·      

How well did the presenters organize their thoughts?                        5         4           3           2            1

·      

Did the presenters have enough confidence to present their work in front of the class?

                                                                                                         5         4           3           2             1

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