4th Grade Construction

Who are your users? I am creating this project for my fourth grade class (9-10 year olds). I should have approximately 30 students in my class. I expect that they will have varying computer and typing skills, although most kids at my site have computers at home. The majority of them are English speakers.

What do you want them to be able to do as a result of using your web site? I want my students to be able to read an article, think about the main idea of it (and it’s different sections) and add text features (titles, subtitles, headings, captions) to it through the wiki. I want them to also think critically about other classmates’ suggested text features, and comment on them through the wiki’s discussion.

What have others done that is similar? I have not seen any other projects similar to this one. Most of the wikis I’ve seen have the students doing more writing than I plan to. In fact, all of the pages will be set up for them with just a little editing.

What performance drivers might prevent them from learning with this tool? (skills/knowledge, motivation, environment, incentive) One concern is computer and typing skills – navigating the site. I plan to have the project heavily scaffolded. They will not actually be doing a lot of editing on the pages. Mostly I hope to see good ideas for text features that demonstrate an understanding of the main idea of the article. This brings up another concern — reading ability. Most of the kids at my school read at grade level; I plan to include less challenging articles for struggling readers. They may have trouble supporting their comments in discussion threads. Being polite when commenting on each others’ contributions will also need to be addressed.