Geo-Inquiry process implementation plan Background Information Grade level: Middle school, class 6 Subject: Science Topic: Micro-organisms and diseases Big idea: Public health Goals: The students will be: Use and understand different scientific terminologies related to the topic. Identify and categorize major types of microorganisms. Describe how some microorganisms can be useful to human but others are harmful. Understand the role of microorganisms to cause diseases. Know about the preventive measures for the infection caused by microorganisms to maintain public health. Effectively communicate their ideas and understanding the relation between microorganisms and public health using appropriate terminologies in front of audience. Structure information and ideas in a way that is appropriate to the specified format (Data collection, visualization using maps, graphs etc.) Evaluating the decisions, we make about our lifestyle can help us to be aware about improvements we can make about our communities and ourselves. They will be able to analyze, synthesize and evaluate information gathered or generated by observation, experience, reflection, reasoning and communication. Apart from these goals student will set their individual goal for this project which either can be content oriented or skill oriented, There are five steps of a Geo-inquiry project: Ask Collect Visualize Create Act Keeping all these five stages in my mind I will prepare my implementation plan. I will check the prior knowledge of my students about microorganisms. Then I will ask them to do some background research on the topic. Their key focus areas will be: types of microorganisms, harmful and helpful microorganisms, their role in disease spreading, widespread diseases caused by microorganisms in past 10 years, protective measures and awareness. I will specially recommend them to go through the link: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019ncov/index.html to know about the disease COVID-19 caused by Corona virus as it is a current problem of our country. Now my children will be asked to do some project on microorganism. I want them to do some work on spread awareness for the disease COVID-19. To ignite their curiosity and explorer mindset I will show them a suitable video which shows a journey of an explorer. Then I will discuss with them about his journey and steps he/she has followed during the total journey starting from the issue he/she wants to investigate till the action has been taken. It would be helpful for them to complete the project in an organized manner. Geo-Inquiry process implementation plan As a teacher I want them to do a whole class project. Here I am choosing the topic for them which is a current problem of our country and it is very well fitted with my curriculum. The topic is: “Prevent COVID-19 outbreak by awareness campaign within a specified locality” Phase-1: ASK As a teacher I would help my students to think in proper direction to form a Geo-inquiry question. What they want to do? Why they want to do this? Where/ in which area they want to select to do this project? How will you find out the target people for the awareness campaign? What could be various methods to carry out the awareness campaign? How would you decide whether the campaign was successful? They can take help of Student’s worksheet 3, 4, 5 to form Geo-inquiry question from Students resource packet. Appropriate, well crafted, meaningful geo-inquiry questions in the first phase may not happen by the students. Opportunity to refine their question should be given after research and data collection. Whole class of my students will be involved to develop a well framed inquiry question. They will brainstorm queries related to the topics and then vote for the question they would like to investigate. I would provide them the student resource packet to develop Geo- inquiry question. Creating a project plan For this phase they have to decide on: What data will they need to collect? How will they collect the data? How long will it take to collect the data? What type of research will they need to do? Who should they talk to about the issue? Here also whole class of students will brainstorm and share their ideas. I will guide their discussions in a right direction to achieve the action. At the end of their discussions they will take the call. The task will be divided group-wise among the students. Timeline: Students will be given 4-5 sessions of 60 mins. for this. Phase-2: Collect Group-wise task 1. Preparing the survey questionnaire regarding the level of awareness about the disease COVID-19 and its preventive measures. For this students need to research on Corona Virus, its effect and prevention. If they like to interview some doctor to know about it they can do that. Preferably the questions would be multiple-choice type. Address of the surveyee would be mentioned. Geo-Inquiry process implementation plan I will give one-week (5 sessions of 60-90 mins.) time to finalize the survey form. In between they need to take feedback from peers,. This is very important part of the project and the success depends on this. 2.Survey will be sent online to the parents of their own school, and one more neighbouring private school. Students will take the help of school administration to get the e-mail id and send the form. They will go to each class and their appeal will be to request their parents through them to fill up the survey form. Two subgroups will work under this group, one for own school and other for neighbouring one. 3.Same survey form will be translated in regional language (Hindi) and distributed among parents of two Corporation schools (where students come primarily from economically backward families) in our locality. Senior class children of those schools will be told to interview their parents (at least hundred parents from each school) and fill up the form if the parents are unable to fill it up. If required camp will be organized with the help of teachers. 3.Children will interview supportive staff of each school. 4.Some students will take photograph or video when the other will conduct the interview. For this they will be allowed to use phone. Timeline: For the survey part, I will give them one-week time. But for Corporation schools I will give two extra days to translate the form in Hindi. Phase3: Visualize This phase will guide students through organizing the data they have collected, visualizing the data in a way that convey an understanding. For that first they will prepare the graph synthesizing the data to show the percentage of parents highly aware, moderately aware, little aware for each school. Then the students will analyze the data comes under moderate and low awareness for further investigation to know which all areas these parents live. If it shows some specific areas then students will identify with which school/ schools are they associated. Now they will create a base map of their study area. They will be provided rough-draft map worksheet for this. They can use satellite view of the area and can take printout to use. Or they can purchase map of their local area to use. On the map they will show the location of the school they surveyed. They can show the area where the people are highly, moderately and very little aware. They can add graph to it which will help people to easily understand the issue. They will be able to a comparative analysis among different schools, Corporation school Vs. private school at a glance. The map will show the specific area of our locality where awareness need to raise. They can add photographs or other relevant images on the map. In this stage they will take the feedback from the peers and final revised version will be prepared. Timeline: For this work they will be given 3 session of 90 mins. Phase 4: Create In this phase students will create the story using all information they gathered and all data they analyzed into context which will give people a strong message towards the answer of the Geo-inquiry question. This story should make people understand the importance of the issue and motivate them to take action. I will ask students the following questions which will guide them to create a story board. Geo-Inquiry process implementation plan What is your Geo-inquiry question? What kinds of data did you collect? What did you learn from this data? How will you represent that data in your story? Who will be your target audience? What is the answer to your question/ proposed solution? What action would you like to take based on your findings? What kind of elements will be most important to tell your story? What is the best tool to use to tell your story? I would suggest students to prepare a list of important elements like charts, tables, graphs, maps, images, video, story lines etc. I would suggest students to use Geo-inquiry storyboard worksheet to create storyboard. The students will now create a compelling storyboard compiling all the important elements they have gathered which should be crisp but informative and gives a powerful message. It can be done by poster display in the school where the parents will be called to view and discuss. They can prepare a simple slide presentation or multimedia presentation. For each cases they should show it to their peers and reviewed by them and then finalize. For this stage I will allot them 3-4 sessions of 90 mins. Phase-5: Act After data analysis it is observed that some parents of Corporation schools are moderately aware of the danger of the disease and preventive measures and a large number of parents are very little aware of the issue (as per my assumption because they mostly come from economically backward families and level of education is low). Whereas data shows that most of the parents of the private schools are well aware of the issue. So, based on the findings students will now plan their action. Step-1 They will organize Mask-making workshops in their school. For this they will do some research work to make mask with easily available materials, arrange some fund to purchase materials and plan the workshop. They will collect the masks made by students for further distribution (By this activity I will be integrating Mathematics, product designing with the subject). As I mentioned that the students of the corporation schools come from socio-economically backward families, my students will distribute masks free of cost to help them. It helps to increase the sense of responsibility towards our society in this critical time. Step-2 They will organize awareness campaign in the Corporation schools where it is observed that parents are not so aware about the preventive measures. Parents will be called to attend the campaign on weekend. Poster will be displayed and students will explain the parents about the prevention. They can show the presentation. They will distribute the mask made by the students of their own school. Students will appeal all the parents to spread the awareness to other neighbors of their locality. Step-3 Geo-Inquiry process implementation plan Next week again they will call the parents and again distribute the same survey form to fill and analyze the data collected. Is the data showing any difference? The efficacy of the campaign will be determined by analyzing the data. Total 2-weeks’ time will be allotted for this work. ASSESSMENT: The students will fill up Peer-review form, Self-evaluation form, ongoing reflection form, final reflection form. Formative assessment will be done as ongoing process throughout the project after each phase through self-evaluation, peer-review and final reflection. Summative assessment will be done on preparing the survey form, analyzing the data, mask making workshop, presentation. For summative assessment I will Use the rubrics in the GeoInquiry Process Resource Packet to assess students’ Geo-Inquiry Stories and presentations. Other implementation details: I work as curriculum developer with one consultancy farm who provides supports to some schools of our country. Most of our schools and teachers are not that much technically equipped to support progressive way of teaching. Till now most of the schools are struggling with the mindset to ensure this way of teaching over the traditional way. Very limited number of schools will be able to follow this guideline and for others we need to develop a mindset and take a middle path. I feel that I have meet the course goals and I definitely exceeded my own goals. I expected this course to be good, but I never imagined that it would be so well structured, so rich in resources and so engaging, and I'm more than satisfied with the results. For me, a wow moment was when I discovered the 'explorer mindset' and how explorers used a similar structure of the Geo-Inquiry to develop their exploration projects, and I look forward to present these ideas to my students, I'm pretty sure that they will be very excited to be little explorers. This course has given me many new ways to think, understand and re-evaluate my practices, and has given me new insights and strategies that will be important and very helpful not only for the implementation of the Geo-Inquiry, but for any new lessons and activities that I will teach to my students. This reflection about my practice and the discovery of new strategies will help me creating opportunities to give more engaging and meaningful lessons that will be more compatible with the reality of my students and with what is important to them. I always liked the idea of teaching, learning and working with an online community and the experience this course provided make me like the idea even more. I loved the interactions and the opportunity to learn with my peers from various places of the world. everyone's knowledge and dedication make the course even more enriching and complete. Thank you for the opportunity! - The course has provided me an opportunity to grow professionally by allowing me to see how to apply new tools and skills into my curriculum and teaching materials. It also has allowed me to see how other educators came up with great ideas that I could accommodate and apply to my school. I enjoyed working on this online community, it was easy to work at Geo-Inquiry process implementation plan my own pace and on my own time. I liked the discussion boards and learning from others through reading these. Thank you to all the educators for your thoughtful contributions and to @Vanessa WIlson for all your help! Background Information This is an incredibly relevant topic in today's world. While this is written for middle school, students of all ages could benefit from engaging with this theme. Your goals are actionable and measurable for the most part, but I have a question about "Structure information and ideas in a way that is appropriate to the specified format." I wonder if this could be fleshed out more to provide more context. Preparing Your Students This is incredibly interesting and helpful research to help students gain an understanding of what is happening today and make connections to past pandemics. As the research and updates about COVID-19 change daily and even hourly, how will you ensure students use this during their GeoInquiry Process? Do you know more specifics on the microorganism project they may participate in within your preparations? Will they have a choice over this or engage in the project as groups or whole class? Plan Outline The plan outline is organized well and easy to follow. In the ask portion, it may be helpful to add what specific pages of the Student Resource Packet they will use during each phase to ensure all teachers have easy access to the material. The collect phase is interesting and could provide a lot of meaningful data to your students. I love how you included the need for translation to ensure equitable access to the survey. Will students include some kind of question to gather geological data from the participants to help create a map? For the Act portion, what specifically will be the correlation between the masks and the project? Will the masks contain information about the topic or is it something for fun? Assessment and Evaluation The assessments seem to be age-appropriate, but I would be interested to know a little more about what each one entails. Other Implementation Details The outline is organized well and follows all the steps of the Geo-Inquiry Process. There are some areas that could be fleshed out more to provide more context and understanding for any teacher who picks up the material. Overall, this is a wonderful lesson, and I would be excited to see what your students do with it! Was this feedback helpful?
