Essential skills
Communication, Information, Social and Co-operative
Strands
Culture and Heritage
Participants
Year 3 class
Email friends (adult friends of the teacher in the United States,
England, Taiwan, Sweden, Japan, and Canada)
Description
Students were given the following scenario:
Your parents have decided to take you to live somewhere else
so that you can try out a different winter. Where will you choose
to go? Your choices are United States, England, Taiwan, Sweden,
Japan, or Canada.
In groups students generated questions which would provide
information about the weather, school, keeping warm, food, sports
and games, moving about, celebration, and interesting places.
Having generated numerous questions students had to formulate
one question for each category.
Students emailed their question to each of the email friends
(these were arranged by the teacher).
Students recorded responses to their questions on a wall
chart.
Students discussed information gathered recording their responses
on a PMI chart
(Word doc, 24k).
Students decided on where they would like to spend a winter
holiday and completed a letter
(Word doc, 23k), justifying their choice by commenting on the
positive and interesting aspects and suggesting how they would
cope with the negative aspects.
Evaluation
Students
Emails received from contacts were very personal and detailed,
providing useful information, which allowed students to process
this and make decisions.
Responses were directly related to questions, therefore the
students were not distracted by irrelevant information, as they
might be when researching in other ways.
Students established a relationship with their email friends,
which gave authenticity and value to the information gathered.
The students were involved in much discussion as they generated
questions and decided which questions to send. This gave them
real ownership of the research.
Additional
comments
The structure of the unit allowed for easily identifiable stages:
scenario
question development
emailing to gather information
receiving information
sorting information
processing information
evaluating information
decision making
The structure could be applied to other research tasks where
students are required to gather, sort, synthesise, and evaluate
information in order to make a decision.
All material emerged as the unit progressed. Apart from email
access no other resources were needed to conduct the research.
