Information Lesson: Kids in the White House

Excitement was in the room… you could feel the learning happening.

Just wanted to share with you a great lesson that just seemed to happened. Don’t you love these moments?

Scenario: First grade class was coming to TechConnect. All they teacher knew was that she wanted to do something related to “post inauguration”.

My colleague Paige McGee and I spend time to search age appropriate links and posting them on our TechConnect blog.

The students arrived and their teacher gave them a brief introduction about what we were going to learn and talk about. She made the connection with what they had seen the day before at the presidential inauguration which we had streamed in for the entire school.

They were to go to their individual computers and explore the links we had provided and find one fun fact about the kids, pets, or the White House.

Our school is a very affluent school, which means that EVERY student has access to a computer at home. The difference in ability to manipulate a computer is very pronounced. It is obvious which students are allowed and encouraged to use a family computer at home and who does not. We are still dealing with fine motor skill development too.

So, it took time for the first graders to open up the browser, which takes them directly to our school homepage, find the link to TechConnect and start reading.

Children living in the White House

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to live in the White House with your mom or dad being the President?

For a few children this dream was and is  a reality.

Image by mbgrigby

Check out the following links:

• First Kids
• Children in the White House
• Slideshow from Tad Lincoln to Obama girls
• Learn who hides behind the White House’ window
• Presidential Pets
• Take a virtual tour of the White House

Tidbits of First Kids (from Lesson Plan at Academy Link.com)

Abraham Lincoln’s youngest son, Tad, loved to play
in the White House. He once wore a soldier’s uniform and bombarded
the Cabinet Room door with a toy cannon.

Another president, James Garfield, lived in the White House with his family. His sons liked to have pillow fights in the East Room. They raced on the polished floors of the White House on large-wheeled tricycles.

The lively family of Theodore Roosevelt turned the White House into a play house. The younger ones roller-skated through hallways. Quentin, Theodore’s youngest son, loved animals. Once he borrowed a selection of snakes from a pet store. He burst in on an important meeting and dropped the snakes on his father’s desk, quickly ending the meeting. When another of Theodore’s sons got the measles, Quentin decided a visit from the family pony would cheer him up. He
snuck the pony onto an elevator and took it to his brother’s bedroom.

President John F. Kennedy’s son was just two months old when the family moved into the White House. Little “John-John” as he was called, liked to crawl around his father’s feet and hide behind a panel in the president’s desk. “John-John” turned the president’s desk into his own special fort.

Amy Carter was ten when her dad, Jimmy Carter, became president. Amy had a homework assignment that she didn’t quite understand. She asked for help from her mother who also didn’t know the answer. Her mother called some of the president’s helpers to answer the question.
They sent a delivery truck to the White House full of computer printouts. They thought the question came from the president and worked all weekend trying to find out the answer to Amy’s homework question

I wonder what Malia and Sasha will be up to during their time in the White House. What do you think?

We noticed that many of the children were really not reading, but rather looking at pictures and then clicking around. We reminded them that they needed to find a fun fact and then would come up to the SmartBoard to share that fact.

Once the first few students figured it out and we added the fact on the SmartBoard and inserted a clipart form the gallery, it seemed to snowball. Many literally ran back to their computer to “read” about another fact. They returned to the board with a part of that information. We wanted to have more detailed information, so they scurried back to find it. So Chelsea Clinton lived in the Whote House. How old was she when she moved in?

You could feel the excitement, you could feel the learning, you could feel the sense of accomplishment when they looked at the SmartBoard with ALL the fun facts they collaboratively accumulated.

We felt that it was a great lesson for this age group to :

• practice reading for information
• practice reading hyperlinked text
• use the Internet to gather facts
• share with others

We took a screenshot of the SmartBoard slide and the teacher inserted it into her classroom blog. I wonder what extended learning will occur at home and in the classroom, when students revisit the image and recall the facts they have gathered.