Collaborative+Projects

SER-Niños - May, 2009 Cross-Grade and Cross-School Collaborative Projects
The SER-Niños teaching staff was grouped into several small 3-4 member teams, like grades together. For the cross-school cross-grade collaborative projects, the teams were assigned to work with another grade level, either within the school or with Houston Heights High School (HHHS) or the University of Houston Charter School (UHCS). Mentors from HHHS and UHCS were assigned to work with the teacher teams. Their task was coach and assist the SER-Niños teachers for the duration of the project. The SER-Niños teachers were presented with the project at their professional development session in January, 2009. They presented their finished products at the last professional development session, May 8, 2009. The following describes the cross-grade or cross-school projects. Also included are links to the lesson plans and other materials.

//Team A. Recycling Paper for Paper Making//
For this project, eight 3rd - 4th grade SER-Niños classrooms collaborated with one 3rd – 4th grade University of Houston Charter School (UHCS) classroom. Houston Heights High School Mentors and their students participated by creating a videotape of different phases of the event. At the beginning of the project, UHCS students prepared a PowerPoint with steps, images, video clips and resources for the SER-Niños 3rd and 4th grade students. SER-Niños students then carried out the actual making of the paper product from the recycled paper. Heights High School students videotaped the actual process of papermaking. They produced a culminating PowerPoint with an interview/documentary edge to it. The final video product was shared with students from all three of the schools. SER-Niños then produced a PowerPoint and embedded the video into their own PowerPoint.

//Team B. Blog for Earth//
This large team was composed of SER-Niños middle school classes partnering with SER-Niños 1st and 2nd grades. For their blogging project, team members were paired across grades. Middle school classes partnered with 1st and 2nd grade teachers. Two teachers from the University of Houston Charter School were the Mentors for this collaborative project. These Mentors provided hands-on training on how to set up and participate in a blog. The teacher pairs then determined how they wanted to approach this project. Some chose the topic of “Blog For Earth.” Another team chose "Our Favorite Childhood Stories. Below are lesson plans, presentations, and blogs from the different teams: www.gogreenteambb.blogspot.com www.brightmindsthinkalike.blogspot.com www.gogreenserninos.blogspot.com

//Team C. Kite Making//
For this project, seven SER-Niños classrooms - Pre K (ages 3 & 4), K, and 1st grade, collaborated with one 5th grade SER-Niños classroom. The Mentors’ 2 classrooms (K-1) at UHCS also participated in this project. The goal of this collaboration was a fun learning project that integrated a cultural association, physical activities, art creativity, technology, as well as parent and teacher collaboration. SER-Niños fifth grade students used technology to research and present a brief story about kites and how to make a paper kite. They shared this with students at both UHCS and Ser-Niños. After making the kites, SER-Niños Pre K students flew the kites in the parking lots during P.E. class. The 5th grade class didn’t make kites but created a document that explained the project, including associated TAKS objectives, and photos of the younger students making the kites. The students at UHCS prepared a presentation that showed the kite making process as well as flying the kites outside at the school.

//Team D. Cross-grade Collaborations:// George Washington Carver
This project was designed to introduce SER-Niños kindergarten and fifth grade students to the life and accomplishments of George Washington Carver. The students researched G.W. Carver, watched a video about G.W.C. and presented their research in digital presentations. The students then recreated some basic G.W. Carver experiments. In addition, one kindergarten class made peanut butter from raw peanuts and the other made sweet potato doughnut holes, foods that G.W.C. had experimented with. Teachers and students used electronic presentation software (PowerPoint, Photostory3), pre-recorded video, Internet search engines, library books, blenders, hot plates, mixing bowls, and assorted kitchen utensils. The students engaged in a variety of activities to complete this project. These activities ranged from individual research of the subject (fifth grade), group video viewing (kindergarten), small group kitchen experiments (kindergarten), creating and scanning responses (fifth grade), creating PowerPoint and PhotoStory3 presentations (fifth grade).