The Future Entrepreneurs of Grand Prairie (in my sixth grade classroom)

I am a 6^th Social Studies Co-Teacher and for the past six weeks we have been using technology to help teach our kids how to buy, sell, and market.  We have also taught them how to balance a checkbook and even how to reconcile an account.  Marketplace Grand Prairie is an economics curriculum for sixth grade students that integrates Math, English, Social Studies, and Technology to help kids understand the importance of supply and demand, advertisement, entrepreneurship, goods and services, etc.  The students take a career interest survey online that helps them determine what type of career path that they should pursue in Marketplace Grand Prairie.  The students receive a list of available employment options at MarketPlace and then fill out an application and resume for the jobs that they are interested in pursuing.  They also go on interviews to determine what job they will work at and whether or not they will be the owner, accountant, or sales representative.  

Once the jobs have been determined the students divide into groups based on the shop that they will work at.  Each group has an owner, accountant, and two sales rep.  Then the students must shift their focus to creating a name and logo for their company.  The next several weeks involve many hours of work using technology to create and produce advertisements for their newly formed company.  The students use Microsoft Publisher to create advertisements and they use Audacity to record their advertisements.  The Web Design Team of Marketplace scans all the advertisements onto the monitors so that the people of Marketplace can view “commercials” while they are shopping for goods.  The students complete all the required elements needed for a day at Marketplace and at the end of the six weeks they travel to our career high school where the second floor of the high school has been transformed into a Market Economy.  Sophomores and Juniors from the Business Courses at the high school run Marketplace and so the kids really enjoy getting to work with the high school students.  This is one of the most fantastic ways that I have EVER seen technology and Social Studies brought together!!!

Technology Across the Senses # 10

I believe that two of my strongest areas of learning through multiple intelligences are: verbal/linguistic and musical/rhythmic.  This is evident in the fact that every single time I hear someone speak about a topic that is of interest to me that I immediately pull out a paper and pen to record what I am hearing and reflect on my own thoughts.  It is also evident because I can immediately pull out of my own head multiple pieces of factual information that I have learned over the years through rhyme and song.  I also played in the band when I was in Middle and High School.

As a teacher I believe that one of the main ways that I teach information to my students is  through visual/spatial.  The reason that I teach so much to the visual/spatial is because I have so many students who have required accommodations that include visual and graphic organizers and supplemental aids.  I also do this because the kids seem to kind of tune out when I lecture but if I provide some type of visual along with what I am saying they seem to tune in a bit more.  I think it has to do a lot with the technology age that we are in.  Another way that I teach information to my kids is through intrapersonal.  I like to provide opportunities for my kids to work with each other to problem solve.  They love to socialize and they love group projects so I like to use their interpersonal strengths to help them learn.

My Lesson Plan Objective for 7^th Grade ELA is centered around the following two essential questions:

1. How do writers communicate purposefully and clearly with various audiences?

2. How do effective writers hook and hold readers and make writing easy to follow?

My Objectives are:

Students will understand that there are many different purposes for reading and writing

Students will be able to identify reasons why an author writes

Students will be able to read different types of written work and identify ways that the author was able to “hook” the readers and make the writing easier to follow

Here are some of the many different ways that I might be able to integrate multiple intelligences into my lesson plan based on the needs of all the different learners in my class.

Multiple Intelligences and Technology

Multiple Intelligences	Two Example of Media/Software to integrate Multiple Intelligences in English Language Arts Classroom
Verbal/Linguistic	http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory/Literature/Short-Stories#1 Students will go online to the learn out loud website and choose a short story to listen to on a podcast.  Students will then discuss with each other whether or not the author was able to “hook” them and why or why not.
	The students will  read a novel in class and each week they will go onto the websites www.readwritethink.org and complete  an interactive student activity based on what they have read thus far; the interactive student activities will follow along with the steps of the Writing Process until finally the students publish their own “alternate ending” to the story after they finish the novel
Logical/Mathematical	http://education.ti.com/studentzone/StudentZoneUS/index.html Texas Instruments provides teachers and students with lesson plans to use with the TI graphing calculator.  In order for writers to communicate purposefully and clearly with various audiences they must know what their audience is interested in reading.  In this lesson idea students would ask each other what types of books they like to read and then record and graph the data using the TI graphing calculator.
	The students could use a database program to record all of their favorite books and then use the information they recorded in the database to create an excel program that would record the types of genres or books that students enjoy the most
Visual/Spatial	http://bighugelabs.com/ Students will create trading cards from the big huge labs website using pictures that depict characters or scenes from their favorite books as children.  They will choose one quote for each trading card that they felt “hooked” them as an audience when reading that book as a child.
	http://en.childrenslibrary.org/ the students will go to the international children’s digital library online and look at the different types of picture books that authors all over the world have written and then discuss how the audience for children has changed over the years and also from country to country
Body/Kinesthetic	http://www.teachingheart.net/readerstheater.htm the students will go online and look at different readers theatre scripts and will vote on a script to act out in class; the students will identify what type of audience this play was written for and will also identify what types of words the author uses in the play to “hook” the readers; students will then act out one of the scripts as a Reader’s Theatre workshop
	The students will use  http://www.isketch.net/ to play an online game of Pictionary based on the novel that they are currently reading in class
Musical/Rhythmic	http://mrduey.com/  the students will listen to a sample of Mr. Duey’s learning through rap songs and then be provided with the lyrics to one of his songs; afterwards the class will discuss what type of audience Mr. Dewey was writing for and why he might have chosen rap in order to communicate and make the writing easier to follow
	The students will write their own rap song about a favorite book that they read; they will post their rap songs on www.gaggle.net the school’s classroom blog and then have a discussion about the songs they wrote through the blogging community
Intrapersonal	http://www.imcpl.org/kids/blog/ the students will be able to talk with others kids just like them on an online blog about their favorite books; the students will also bring in a favorite book and share it with other classmates in a celebrate reading party
	The students will divide into groups and then create a powerpoint game of jeapordy based on questions from the novel they are reading and challenge each other to an interactive game of English Language Arts Jeapordy
Interpersonal	https://docs.google.com/ The students will take an online survey (created on google docs by the teacher in advance) about  their own reading and writing interests  to discover what type of genre best suits them when choosing a piece to read about or to write about
	The students after seeing how an online survey was created will now create their own surveys to give to their friends based on their favorite books or characters of all time
Naturalist	http://richardlouv.com/bio the students will go online and read about an author who writes nature books for children; they will then read one of the books he wrote (teacher can check it out of library before hand) and talk about what types of children’s audiences might nature books
	The students will go outside and use a digital camera to take pictures of things in nature and then come back to class and create a nature e-book online http://e-library.net/Nature.htm
Existentialist	http://www.mtholyoke.edu/omc/kidsphil/kids.html students will go to the philosophy for kids web page and choose one of the books that is featured on that page; students will then read the book and then talk about some of the philosophical issues that characters in the story are dealing with The students will interview a person in their family and find out the story of their life and how they got to where they are today and then blog about some of their findings on the classroom blog www.gaggle.net