Mini-Grant Application for School Year 2021-2022

Submitted by: Elizabeth Davis Email: e5davis@my.putnamschools.org Grade Level: 4th Subject: ELA, Social Studies, Science
Co-Applicant: Email: Grade level: Subject:

School: Browning Pearce Elementary School Type: Public Grade Levels:4th County:Putnam

Approx. Enrollment: 650 Number of teachers:40

School Address:

100 Bear Boulevard
San Mateo, Florida 32187

Phone: 3863290557 Principal:Diana Drew Email: d2drew@my.putnamschools.org

Facebook: Browning Pearce Elementary School
Twitter:

Project Title: Florida Explorers
Project Dates: January 3, 2022-March 31, 2022 Grade Levels:

Focus Area(s) :Florida History- Physical Features of Florida- Florida's Environment -

Abstract:
The Florida Explorers Unit will provide 4th grade students from a Title I school district with a learning experience that will be shared throughout the school and community. This unit allows students to engage in hands-on learning about the state that they live in through collaborative projects, interactive field trips, and live interviews with park rangers from the Florida Everglades. While students from low socioeconomic backgrounds may not have the means to engage in Florida learning through trips to other cities; this unit will allow them to interact with their learning in a way that simply reading articles could never do. The Puppy Cube will allow interactive collaboration for students as they learn together and experience Florida in a whole new way. These 4th grade Florida Explorers will share their experiences with younger grade levels and various stakeholders in the community through presentations during a community night with the use of the Puppy Cube. This project will ensure their learning is solidified and never forgotten.

Proposal:

How is your project innovative?   (25 points)
The Florida Explorers project will be a leader in innovation among Browning Pearce Elementary School (BPES.) This project will give students a learning experience about Florida history and geography through an interactive robot that will allow students to collaborate and own their learning. This unit is a key to fourth grade students as they are learning about where they live and the history behind it. Putnam County has a high poverty rate and every school in the district is a Title I school, receiving free breakfast and lunch for all students. As a result of the socioeconomic status of most of our families, the students rarely have knowledge of Florida outside of our county. This project will enhance learning and schema for students in a unit about Florida that has been taught for several years at BPES. In this unit students learn about various key people and places that impacted Florida’s history. The unit is always beloved by students, but is often hard for them to fully comprehend the details they are learning about because of their minimal life experience with such topics. Currently, the unit has students read and write about Florida’s History. The Puppy Cube is a robot that will display onto any surface. The display is completely interactive and allows students to manipulate the Florida material together and at the same time. There is a great amount of research behind students collaborating on their learning and the use of technology in such learning. John Hattie is an educational researcher who studied the use of various components within student learning and gave each strategy or experience an ‘effect size’ on student learning. Student collaboration with technology supports more than a year’s growth of learning on Hattie’s scale. During this unit, students will use the Puppy Cube to take a virtual field trip to the Florida Everglades where they will be able to interact with park rangers in real time. The Puppy Cube will also allow students to work together on graphic organizers and presentations that they will make to other grade levels for their learning and community members.

How will it fit into your curriculum (include standards)? (10 points)
The history, physical features, and environment of Florida are the main focus of the Social Studies standards in the fourth grade curriculum. Several social studies standards will be taught through this project. English language arts standards as well as science standards will also be integrated into this unit of study. Social studies standards will include the following: SS.4.A.3.1, Identify explorers who came to Florida and the motivations for their expeditions. SS.4.A.6.3, Describe the contributions of significant individuals to Florida. SS.4.G.1.1, Identify physical features of Florida. Science standard: SC.4.L.17.4, Recognize ways plants and animals, including humans, can impact the environment. English language arts standards will include the following: LAFS.4.RI.2.5, Describe the overall structure of events, ideas, concepts, or information in a text or part of a text. LAFS.4.RI.2.6, Compare and contrast a firsthand and secondhand account of the same event or topic, describing the differences in focus and the information provided. LAFS.4.RI.3.7, Interpret information presented visually, orally, or quantitatively and explain how the information contributes to an understanding of the text in which it appears. Students will read informational articles about explorers and significant individuals in Florida’s history such as Ponce de Leon, Henry Flagler, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. After reading about these figures, students will have the opportunity to use this technology to work collaboratively to create graphic organizers. This will help them organize evidence that supports the structure of the text as well as compare and contrast firsthand and secondhand accounts of events. This technology will be beneficial as groups collaboratively form a timeline of events about each individual. Students will also use this technology to participate in a real-time virtual field trip in the Florida Everglades. Through this experience, students will identify many of the important physical features in Florida as well as recognize the impact of plants, humans, and animals on the environment of the Everglades.

How will it encourage long-lasting change in your classroom, school or community? (20 points)
The Florida Explorers project will provide long-lasting change to the students in my classroom providing my students with an experience for learning about the state that they live in. This will help to grow their background knowledge on our state’s history. This experience will be something that they always remember because it will bring the unit to life for them as they engage with one another in learning about the state with the interactive robot and live field trips. This project will even further bring change to our school in the presentation and use of the Puppy Cube in younger grade levels. My students will present to students about the Florida unit in a culminating project. They will use the Puppy Cube for this presentation and instruct these younger students on how to use the Puppy Cube while interacting with the Florida learning. This will assist the younger students in their knowledge of our state and prepare them for their learning about Florida in older classrooms. The project will also provide change to our community in the presentation of the Florida Explorer culminating project at a parent night for our school where various stakeholders will be invited. The students will share their knowledge from the unit and allow parents/stakeholders to interact with the Puppy Cube while learning about the Florida Explorer unit. This entire unit will be one that our community will remember.

How will technology be utilized?  (20 points)
The Florida Explorers project has the opportunity to utilize technology in a way that students at BPES have not experienced. Students will experience interacting with a projector on a collaborative project in real-time. A group of students will work together on one shared activity. All students will be engaged in the activities as they will all contribute simultaneously. This technology allows multiple students to interact with the activity, unlike a shared paper copy in which students must take turns. Through the project, students will work in groups to create graphic organizers and timelines in which they can simultaneously contribute to organizing information. This technology will also allow them to participate and interact in a real-time field trip to the Florida Everglades. Students will interact with the guide through the microphone feature of the device and will also be able to view physical features at a close proximity instead of at a distance with the main classroom projector. At the end of the The Florida Explorers project, students will use this technology to create an interactive PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation incorporating all the information that they learned about significant individuals, explorers, Florida’s physical features, and how the environment is impacted by plants, animals, and humans. This presentation will include interactive features such as drag and drop items, pictures with hyperlinks to videos and additional information, and text-to-speech options provided with the voices of the students. Students will then present this presentation to another grade level at BPES allowing those students to also utilize the interactive technology features.

What evidence will you collect to show student gain?   (10 points)
This unit of Florida has been taught for the past two years at BPES as well as other schools in our district through reading and writing about Florida’s history and physical features. I will use previous years’ data of classroom assessment grades to compare with my students’ learning in the current year. I can also prove student learning by the outcome of the end of project presentations that students will create and present to a class in a different grade level. Learning can be proven by the quality of the content in the slide presentation as well as how the students present the information to the class that they present to.

How will participants share your project results with the community?  (15 points)
This project and its results will be shared throughout the community! The students will present to younger students, to parents during parent night, and we will share all of this with our community newspaper-The Palatka Daily News. We publicize this learning on our school and district facebook pages to promote the learning with our entire community. This learning will give students ownership and excitement about their school work. Our community will also be very enthusiastic to learn about the Florida Explorer unit and the innovative technology that the students were able to utilize for a greater learning experience.

Budget:

I, Elizabeth Davis, certify that the application is complete and final, AND I verify that I have received permission to apply for these funds from Diana Drew,the Principal of Browning Pearce Elementary School and any other individuals required by my school district.

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