Natural Diaster Youth Summit Description

Natural Disaster Youth Summit Website

Teacher goals:

•  Improve my skill of collaborative learning.
•  Learn from other teachers’ practices
• Student goals:
• Let them use Japanese in real communication
•  Make students realize the importance of human lives and preparation to disasters.
• Let them enjoy the process of learning

What knowledge will students acquire by engaging in this project?

•  Students acquire the knowledge of what is needed to protect their lives and words related disaster prevention.
• Students acquire how to write a letter in Japanese.
• Students will know the situation in Japan after the 3.11 disasters

Curriculum Standards

Common Core State Standards

• Reading 4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
• Writing 4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
• Writing 8. Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism.
• Speaking and Listening 1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
• Speaking and Listening 5. Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations.
• Language 3. Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.
• Language  4. Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases by using context clues, analyzing meaningful word parts, and consulting general and specialized reference materials, as appropriate.

Timetable and Specific Lessons

Week 1: Tell students about partner school and introduce the NDYS Teddy Bear.

Week 2:  Discuss what they want to put in a Kids Emergency Bag

Week 3: Bring the goods they want to send to Japan.

Week 4: Send the NDYS Teddy Bear with their introduction and goods

Week 5: Receive the NDYS Teddy Bear from Japan. See what is in the box.

Discuss about the Kid’s Emergency Bag of partner school and discuss why they included the items

Collaboration:

• Introduce a partner school to students and let them find where the partner school is.
•  Let students guess what the partner students are interested in about Serbia.
• They will send letters, e-mails and have video conference with the partner school.
• At the end of the project, representative students participate in the NDYS face to face gathering.

Assessment of student work:

• How will you determine what students know and need to know?

• By checking grammatical mistakes and the volume of students’ writings, teacher can determine what students know and need to know.

• How will the appropriateness of student work be evaluated?

• All the writings are scanned and collected in each student’s portfolio.
• Students will be evaluated by their writings and evaluation will be done by multiple teachers.

• What did they learn from project work and presentation? Refer to your student goals and how the students achieved them.

• Students will learn how to express themselves in Japanese and how to cope with disasters.
• They will achieve their goals by writing letters in Japanese and enjoy the process of the project.

Conclusion of activity:

• How will the students draw their projects to a conclusion?

•  At the end of the project, the NDYS teddy bear will be sent back to Japan with various letters written in Japanese and English.
• Students will receive their teddy bear back from Japan with letters written in Japanese and English.

• Add how will they share project work with others?

•  At the end of the project, group of students make A0 size one sheet paper presentation. They will be exhibited on the wall of their school for let other students know their Teddy bear exchange experiences.