I arranged to implement this cyberlesson with a small group of students in an after school setting. All student participants were volunteers who were told that they would be participating in a pilot activity that, if successful, might be used with future sixth grade science classes. The group consisted of three male and four female students. We met in the computer lab after school four times in order to complete all sections of this cyberlesson.
Description of Cyberlesson
The cyberlesson centers on the book The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. As a before reading activity for the cyberlesson the students were asked to complete a rainforest scavenger hunt using pre-selected Internet sites to locate answers to several rainforest questions that I felt were necessary background information for the reading of the book. The students were also asked to take a picture walk through the book before beginning to read and to record any predictions that they had about the story in their rainforest journals.
The book The Great Kapok Tree is about a man who enters the rainforest with the intent of cutting down a large Kapok tree. Before he can finish the man falls asleep at the base of the tree. As he sleeps, the man is visited by the many animals and people of the rainforest, each with their own reason why the man should not chop down this important tree. As students read, they were asked to keep a running list of all of the reasons given to the man by the animals.
Students stopped reading the book at a point just before the man wakes up. Before continuing to read they were asked to write a persuasive letter to the sleeping man telling him what they thought he should do upon waking. Students were directed via the cyberlesson to persuasive writing guidelines as well as a list of useful persuasive writing words and phrases. In their persuasive letters the student participants were instructed to make use of any facts that they had learned from the animals in the story as well as from the websites that they visited before reading the book.
Students then finished reading the book. As an after reading activity, they participated in a role-play in which they hypothesized what would happen to the man, a logger, when he returned to his job site without having completed his task. How would the man defend his decision to let the tree live? After reading, the student participants also looked at maps of the rainforest from both before and after the beginning of logging and deforestation. They then discussed their thoughts and feelings about the fate of real rainforests.
As a beyond reading activity the students visited the website rainforestheros.com – a website which highlights the stories of children who are making a difference in the fight for the rainforests. On this site, the students gathered ideas about how they too can make a difference in the future of the rainforest.
Reflection on Cyberlesson Implementation
All of the students who participated in this cyberlesson were enthusiastic and enjoyed completing the various activities. As a result of this cyberlesson, I think that the student participants have a deeper and richer understanding of the rainforest than their non-participant classmates. The student participants have experienced rainforest artwork, rainforest literature, and have explored rainforest issues while their classmates have only looked at the rainforest through the lens of a science textbook and worksheets.
Particular strengths of the cyberlesson that I noted while observing the students included the rainforest scavenger hunt and the role-play activity. Both of these activities sparked the students’ interest and generated a lot of excitement. During the rainforest scavenger hunt the students competed eagerly to be the first one to locate answers to the various questions. The role-play activity was unlike anything that they had ever done in school. The students had fun assuming the identities of the sleeping man and his boss and defending their positions.
As with any first time activity, there were also a few weak points in the cyberlesson that I would amend before using it again. Though students really enjoyed completing the rainforest scavenger hunt, they all had trouble answering question #5 about the four main types of plants that are found in the rainforest. Though I created the scavenger hunt while looking at the websites- and I am sure that the answer was there at the time I created the question – I could not find the answer when I went back to help the students locate it. It is possible that slight changes had been made to the website since the creation of the cyberlesson. Teachers who use this cyberlesson in the future should check the two websites carefully to make sure that they are still functional and that the answers to the scavenger hunt questions are able to be located. The students’ inability to find a clear answer to the question was an anticlimactic end to an otherwise exciting activity.
In all I think that this cyberlesson was very effective and provides students with an aesthetic as well as an efferent look at the topic of rainforests. In the future I think that it this would be an excellent lesson to do with the entire grade.