Weekly App Practical - Student as Researchers

                                     Weekly App Practical - Student as Researchers

 

      Why must students learn how to research? Research means to carefully analyze the problems or do the detailed study of the specific problems by using special scientific methods. When you examine any topic, you get to know detailed information about that topic. The more knowledge of the topic, the more successful the research is. So, in order to get good output, the student needs to do maximum research. How Early Childhood Education apply "research' into their classroom. In Early Childhood Education, my answer is the process by which students, through their existing knowledge, observation, and experimentation, ask questions and then find the answers with or without teachers' help. 

     When we have any problem, we usually think of a solution to getting confused. Several questions arise in our minds like what to do to overcome this problem. Here comes the role of research. As we all knowns, children have a curious mind, and they have over a thousand questions waiting to ask. As teachers, what should we do when they ask questions? Directly tell the answer, or direct them to make a hypothesis and find the answer by themselves? We don't want to take away their learning opportunity, so we shouldn't tell the answer directly.

    As a teacher, I believe in doing what's best for my students. This means providing tools and scaffolding so my students can be successful. So if research and writing are standards, I want to find a way to make that goal accessible to my students to be successful.

       The research projects are completed during our literacy block or work cycle in a small group in my classroom. The research is done through read-aloud since we don’t have any devices. Therefore, I need some tools to help me find books; like Epic, you may find digital books on this website, and some books are audible, some are Read to me, which I like the most. Epic is free for teachers as long as you have an edu.com email address, and you can create your class, share the class code with your students and assign books for students to read. It does have iOS and Android APP, and it is free to download. Here is the feature below:

 Teacher Account

Student Account, Audio books and Read to Me

 

   How am I going to use it in my lesson? As you can see, I assigned a couple of animal books because we will study living things and non-living things. In these books, we are doing to find the answers to what is living thing and their characters in common? Our literacy block is designed for a 30-minute whole group lesson; we will read these books during our literacy times with physical books if we don't have some books, I will use my phone to play the audible books, we can listen together. Students also may read at home. After we are done reading, kindergarten students must do a research journal; they may work with a small group or individual. 

Students Research Journal

 

      The research is important for the students because it helps them to have a detailed analysis of everything. It enhances their knowledge, allows them to understand the subject, finds their own interest, and learns to balance collaborative and individual work. Therefore, all the educator should facilitate their students to be “researchers.”