Project+2+Plan

=Project Plan: Phase 2=

General Topic: ** Science ** Specific Topic: ** Food chains ** Audience: ** Sixth grade students ** Activity: ** Group reflection writing **

Topic Overview
Food chains exist in every ecosystem, biome, and habitat all over the world, even in your back yard. Food chains are both necessary and delicate parts of the world around us. As the top of the food chain, knowing more about food chains can make us all better stewards of the planet Earth. A food chain is a simplified extraction of a food web in which energy is transferred from one organism to another as each higher level in a food chain ingests or eats lower organisms along the chain for survival. Prior knowledge for being able to understand food chains would include knowledge of Earth's original energy source, the sun, and how this energy is converted into a tangible form for Earth's organisms to utilize this energy (photosynthesis).

Task (what will your audience be doing)
Students will work in pairs and write a reflection about what they observed and learned in their introduction to food chains. They will be given three writing prompts to choose from, and need to include at least 3 vocabulary words within their reflections in an effort to keep them focused on the information they have learned as opposed to just responding with derailed or off topic thoughts. After completing their group reflection, each individual student is then required to post their opinion on at least one other groups reflection within our class blog. All reflections and responses to reflections will all be posted on the class blog site.

Process/ Guidance (how you will create the project)
As 'clock buddies' have been established at the beginning of the year, we continue to use clock buddies to break into groups. Each group will produce their work in a word file and save a copy in a secure location such as a their desktop. After they have a saved copy, log onto the class blog site and copy and paste the writing prompt response with the writing prompt clearly stated at the top of the page along with a list of your group members.

Evaluation (how will you evaluate your audience)
Your work will be evaluated on the clarity of your rational and accuracy of any examples that you state within your reflections. All groups need to post their group reflections on the blog site by the due date, as well as each individual student posting a comment on another group's reflection by the date assigned. Feedback will be given to each student and each group concerning their reflection by email.

Reflection (why did you choose to create this project)
I like the idea of group reflection writing because it gives small groups of students the opportunity to reflect together on what they have learned, and then share out in larger groups with respect to the same prompts or different writing prompts that they did not choose. Keeping the groups down to two members ensures that each members involved will have the opportunity to share varying opinions and observations as they generate one cohesive paper.