Rosemary's North Carolina Cities Project

The topic of the unit I created for my students is North Carolina Cities and it addresses fourth grade social studies objectives, as well as fourth grade computer and technology skills. To begin the unit, I will give students the project description and discuss it with them. In the unit, I expect students to research various cities in the Piedmont Region of North Carolina. The NC City graphic organizer (created in Inspiration), will be a guide for students to know what information they are looking for when researching. In order to locate information, they will use links from my classroom website.

During the unit, students will also learn to use spreadsheets to analyze data and create graphs. I will use the practice spreadsheet and the practice spreadsheet directions to teach students about spreadsheets. As part or their PowerPoint presentation they will include a graph they have created from a spreadsheet showing the population of their city compared to other cities. This graph will allow me to assess their understanding of spreadsheets.

Once students have finished gathering information, they will create a multimedia presentation using PowerPoint to share their information with the class. In order to provide a model PowerPoint presentation for my students, I have created a plain PowerPoint that contains the content students should use in their presentations. I also turned this plain PowerPoint into a colorful and animated presentation in order to show them how to add graphics once they have added the content to their presentation.

In order to assess students learning, I created a rubric using RubiStar to assess their PowerPoint presentations. In order to assess their understanding of other students’ presentations, I will create a Jeopardy game such as the one I created on North Carolina facts which contains questions from other students’ PowerPoint presentations.

At the end of the unit, students will know more information about many Piedmont cities, as well as gained new technology skills. If you would like more information about my unit or to hear about the things I have learned from creating my unit, please check out my Technology Unit overview, my audio description of my unit, or my transcript of my audio.