Untitled Document

Students learn history, computer skills at Lakeside

Fifth-graders In Michelle Casey's class at Lakeside Elementary School got to show off their history knowledge and computer skills Monday, as the class did presentations on the Revolutionary War period for their classmates in the morning and their parents in the evening.

The project, which was organized by Lakeside librarian Sherry Turnbull, served a lot of purposes.

"It kind of gives them just an overview of our country, why it was started and some of the hard work that our Founding Fathers put into just making it happen," Turnbull said.

"They've use reading skills, writing skills, typing skills, Internet searching skills and then presentation skills, where they need to be fluent readers of their presentation."

And while Turnbull has become familiar with PowerPoint, she said she had never handled a project like this before.

"So when I decided that it would be good to do a research project, the students all wanted to turn it into a PowerPoint (presentation)," she said. "That's the first time I've done that with an entire 25-student class.

"I said, well, we'll try. They did their research first, using the books ... the Internet. They had to produce 10 important facts about their subject on note cards and then I read their note cards to make sure that they made sense."

Turnbull said the classmates were allowed to pick their partner and their subject from a series of ideas she suggested. Providing the ideas was not hard for her.

"My first career was 12 years of being a history teacher, so that was good background for me to help them see how to make some of this make sense because a lot of this information was very new to them," she said.

"They might have heard of the Boston Tea Party, but they had no idea what it was. They really got into the details and we tried to use some primary sources even where they would read actual documents of when the patriots were alive to make it more interesting and real for them. They did enjoy looking up pictures that would illustrate their PowerPoint and deciding what person or what event."

The projects were presented Monday in sequential order to when their events happened or the person they researched was prominent.

And while the presentations were over a part of the history curriculum the students had covered, it didn't mean they didn't have to work to get ready.

"Well, it was kind of hard, but you get used to it," said Jasmine Decker, who did a presentation with Sarah Gorman on the three branches of the federal government. "I've already done PowerPoint before, so it was kind of easy, but when you're looking up information and you don't find what you want, you just have to keep trying without stopping and just try to do your best."

Spencer Bernhardt, who paired with FeDor Lomax for a presentation on the Constitutional Convention, said the research, as well as locating pictures for their PowerPoint slides, were the hardest things.

But the students definitely came away with new information.

"I didn't know the President had a President's Cabinet," Gorman said.

"Thirty-nine people signed the Constitution," Lomax said, contradicting the thought that all 55 delegates signed the Constitution."

And learning is what Turnbull is really after.

"It just kind of makes history come more alive for these kids, to see that it might have happened over 200 years ago, but it still is important to them today," she said.