2 Finding information
To do their project well, your students will need access to some resources. Typical resources for student projects include class textbooks, school library reference books and newspapers and magazines. Perhaps the most helpful resources can be found on the Internet or on CD-ROMs. These may not be available to you in your school, so you will have to try to find access for your students in the nearest town. Alternatively, you may be able to produce some basic key fact sheets for your students. Applications such as Google Earth could support a range of different projects.
For a good project you need to plan ahead. Starting several weeks before you intend to begin the project, start to collect information from newspapers, magazines and the internet. Create a folder that you can keep adding to for a few weeks. Enlist your students’ help too. Keep labelled project boxes in your classroom and encourage your students to fill them with materials that they come across that are relevant. Collaborate, share and swap with other teachers in your school. See if you can collaborate with more well-resourced schools – they may be willing to lend you textbooks from time to time.
If you have a friend or colleague who is an expert on the topic you have chosen, you could ask them some questions and record the conversation on your mobile phone. Your students could then listen to it and use some of the information in their project.
Keep student projects from each year – these can act as invaluable resources, providing scientific information for students in subsequent years. Previous years’ projects can be great wall decorations and will show your students what they are aiming for. (Assessment criteria will be discussed later in the unit.) Read Resource 1, ‘Using local resources’, to find out more.
1 Launching project work