Ideas+For+Teachers

http://teachersfirst.wikispaces.com/Elementary+Ideas+and+Successes
 * if you are an elementary teacher who is using a wiki or considering using one, please share some ideas for ways you can use a wiki and why you believe this use would be an effective learning tool. Remember that TeachersFirst's Wiki Walk-Through has some ideas to get you started. [|Return to TeachersFirst, the web site.] **

We use wikis at my school so teachers can collaborate on lesson plans, notifiy each other of pending Student Assistant Team meetings, and discuss relevant topics like reading fluency, the Three Tier Reading Model, and so forth.

Prepare students to take a tour of our school neighborhood. This tour might include a scheduled interview with a community service person. This might be a walking experience. Encourage students to take pictures. After a trip around the neighborhood or a section of the community, have students write a description about what they saw, heard, and felt about the the neighborhood. Add their digital photos to the descriptions. Descriptions can be in the form of poetry, short stories, and interviews.

My 5th grade classes were finishing their unit on Astronomy so I had them do an Astronomy Alphabet just to get them used to the basics of a wiki. My next steps are to teach them to hyperlink from one of the words to write in information.

I can direct my students to certain sites, podcasts, Death on the Nile (National Geographic) [|Podcast]

One of the teachers at my school (I am the media specialist) regularly has her third grade students participate in writing collaborative stories within the classroom. However, they all do it as a group activity and she has to type in the text as they dictate. I think this would be great for her to use with her students or with other students in the third grade for a broader spectrum of collaboration.

Using the message board is an effective tool for students to use when organizing ideas before writing their wikipage. As I write this wiki, seven third, fourth, and fifth grade students "wiki masters" are rotating around the classroom, gathering information from their peers about their topic, inputting it into the message board. Everyone will have access to these collective notes when crafting their individual final drafts, and when making changes to our wiki.