The
Database
Essentially
Elementary
By Elizabeth Holmes
Elizabeth describes how to use an
“America’s
Presidents” database to teach students to sort and
classify
information. These supplemental worksheets will help you
create
and use the America’s Presidents database in your own
classroom.
Read
on for ideas about using other databases.
Further
Database Activities
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A
database is a tool that can be used to structure and
organize
information. As a second-grade teacher, I realized
that many
students have great difficulty organizing and
structuring
ideas for story writing. To help them, I created a
“Wee
Words of Wisdom” database that serves as an
electronic
“story planner.” |
The
“What’s in a Fable?” database is an
exciting and
motivating activity that can be especially useful in a one
computer
classroom. The single workstation can be positioned within
a learning
center that is stocked with copies of fables from around
the world.
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Students
can read a fable and extract characteristics that
are common
to all of the world’s fables. As a fable is
read and
reviewed by students, a new record can be added to
the “Fables
Collection” thus recording information on the
fable’s
entertaining components, the allegory, the moral,
and the
animal characters. Activities analogous to
“What’s
in a Fable?” allow students to discover the
components
of a strand of literature in an interesting and
purposeful
manner. |
As
topics are suggested, a teacher can input data fields that
will
be used for follow-up story writing. In this way, the
story planner’s
data view clearly defines the elements to be included in
each student’s
story. Each student will subsequently complete and print
an individual
record that can then serve as his or her own “story
planner.”
Not only can stories from the entire class be published
and bound,
but also students will have a searchable database in which
they
can find material by using keywords or names.
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“Everything
You Ever Wanted to Know About Dinosaurs” is an
electronic
collection that appeals to all elementary students.
This topic
is presented to demonstrate the value of beginning a
database
of information in kindergarten and extending the
collection
of data throughout the elementary experience.
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Although
kindergartners will be satisfied to add the “big
names”
such as Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops, the second
graders will
want to extend the collection to include a larger database
of relatively
well-known dinosaurs. The fourth, fifth and sixth graders,
however,
will be challenged to research the topic of dinosaurs in
depth to
discover the most obscure dinosaurs and will be delighted
to add
“new” dinosaur discoveries that are periodically
unveiled
as breaking news in the media. This schoolwide project,
that can
originate with each kindergarten class and follow the
group of students
through the sixth grade, will ultimately represent an
extensive
body of research. This exercise not only provides a broad
base of
content knowledge about dinosaurs but, on a broader scale,
the practice
establishes a model of deliberate and extensive research
“habits
of mind.” Using a database as a vehicle for
understanding,
the students are directed toward assimilating some of the
big ideas
in life science.
The
database is an ideal tool for use in the elementary classroom. When it
is used
as a tool for curriculum innovation by a teacher who has vision for
it’s
power and utility, the database will become entrenched throughout the
elementary
curricula. The database is one instrument that will help teachers meet
the challenges
of educating students who will work in the 21st century workplace. The
database
is a tool that has the capacity to ground students in the “Six
C’s”:
compute, communicate, conclude, confirm, categorize, and classify. I
call the
database the “Informanagement Tool.” Use the
“Informanagement
Tool” for project-based electronic collections and watch your
students
grow in the “Six C’s,” in motivation, in content
knowledge and
in a thirst for collecting information—and that, my friends, is
defined
as “learning.”
Copyright © 1998, ISTE (International Society for Technology
in Education).
All rights reserved.
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