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= Celebrating Around the World! =

Unit Overview:
This is a multi-age unit on how different cultures, religious groups, and ethinicities celebrate holidays and pass on traditions. Students love to celebrate holidays, so this topic will hook almost any age or background. Even ELL students and students from low socio-economic families will have plenty of previous knowledge to draw from and be able to make connections. I took the perspective of an elementary media specialist with grades ranging K-5, but the lessons focus on Kindergarten and 2nd grade. This is guided inquiry becuase I give the students the topic of holidays, but they have the choice of which holiday to research, choice of how to organize and how to present. Students use a varitey of resources including maps, books/magazines, interviews with family members/skype pals, webites, videos, and pictures/photographs to find out how they and other groups celebrate the selected holiday. Students compare/contrast the findings, explain the importance of different traditions in celebrating those holidays, and make connections to the real world. Students share their presentations with others in the school and to families and communities during Family Night. Collaboration for a unit like this is the key to it running smoothly. One of the first things to do is sit down with the classroom teacher and plan roles and responsibilities for the teacher, media specialist, and students. Then plan for what happens where...Will students do content reading and note taking in class, media center, both? Should the media specialist to focus on using information skills in context to this unit? What will students need from the media center in their classrooms to support this unit? Having a meeting once a week to discuss progress, problems and success is helpful.

Inquiry Skill:
The lessons focus on accessing and evaluating resources. Students, at early ages and stages, must begin with the basics of knowing what sources of information are available, move to learning what resources are reliable and aplicalble, and then to knowing and using authoritative sources to make links and connections to other sources and information. (Lamb, Experts Vs. Novices) Degroot even characterised experts as being able to see patterns and connections that novices cannot. The **Standards for 21st Century Learners** have standards related to sources and that show the progression of students in using this skill: **1.1.4**- Find,evaluate and select appropritate sources to answer questions.**1.2.2-**Demonstrate confidence and selfdirection by making independent choices in selecting resources and information **2.2.1**-demonstrate flexibility in the use of resources, adapting strategies to each and seeking additional resources when conclusions cannot be drawn. **4.2.1**-Display curiosity by pursuing personal interests through multiple resources. The standards even show a level of scaffolding by moving from find, evaluate, and select resources to showing flexibility in the selection and need for more or better resources.

Standards:
//2.1.4- I.D. celebrations, symbols, and traditions and explain their importance// Others: 1.1.5/1.3.8, 2.2.4, 3.3.9 (all related to holidays) 4.1.1-Native Americans in IN (use to highlight traditions, celebrations of Native American cultures in IN) 5.1.3-Native Americans of West, Southwest, North West, Arctic, & Sub-Arctic E/LA: 5.3.6- Evaluate symbols in mthys and traditions using literature from different cultures (use holiday stories/traditions)
 * Social Studies:** //K.1.2- I.D celebrations and holidays as a way to honor ethnic heritage//

Lesson Comparison
I used standard 1.1.4 (21st Century Learners)- find,evaluate, and select appropriate sources to answer questions- for both grade levels and created lessons that deepen the understanding and student application for this skill. The kindergarten lesson introduced students to the basics of resources and what they are. The second grade students were also introduced to resources, but went deeper into the concept by building on what resources are and going into different types of resources, primary and secondary. Kindergarten students were then asked to evaluate resources on wether or not it would help them or if information could be found. Second graders were asked to evaluate resources based on credibility, accuracy, authorship and other characteristics. Students mature through these skills from very basic and deepen the understanding of that skill. The release of responsibility for kindergarten students was much slower than in second grade. Kindergarten students recieve more modeling in the introduction of each lesson. I have students create and recreate charts when their understanding changes in the finding resources lesson, giving more visual and tactile support. Then in the next mini-lesson, I only have kindergarten students evaluate resources based on one criteria (Will it help answer the question?) to help build student success before giving more difficult resources to evaluate. Second grade students go further in depth with both finding varied resources and evaluating them. These students do not need as much guidance in the introduction stage of the lessons. Students can jump right in to the concepts and applications of the skills with less teacher support and practice. This group of second graders also needed less vocabulary support due to a stronger language background. In the evaluation lesson the only class that should need a vocabulary lesson is the inclusion class. The students still have some visual and tactile support, but are moving into using textual support. Students still use post-its to classify and rearrange information, but when on their own they must use charts and tables to keep track of their own learning. In Kindergarten the student information scientist is just emerging and beginning to understand that there is a method to learning new information. Their role is to explore resources and think critically about what will resources will give information and will help answer the question/problem.The instructional specialists' role is to give students experiences with a variety of resources and give them the tools and practice for critical thinking so that eventually they will begin to do that independently. The instructional specialist will need to give kinderagrtners more structure and control of the inquiry until they are able to take over. Second graders already have the understanding of resources, now they need to understand different resources and how they can be used to gather new understandings. They are also using critical thinking skills to evaluate resources, but second grade students have to be more selective and learn to understand perspective. Their role is to draw conclusions from a varitey of resources and analyze those resources. The instructional specialist needs to help students stay on track and correct misconceptions. Less control is needed in second grade the instructional specialist should guide and conference with students.