Desert+Survival+-+Karen

4th grade Social studies - AZ and reading Students will read a novel dealing w/desert survival (Danger in the Desert) and use the visual ranking tool to rank items that can be used for survival. Student will use cooperative learning to solve problems associated with the book. Students will compare and contrast characters in the story and the descisions they chose. This project will culminate with the students creating a powerpoint and presenting tips to promote desert survival to younger students.

__Visual Ranking__ - My project is made for this tool. My students are going to rank desert survival items and justify their importance to survival. They will also be able to view other goups rankings and critique their justifications as well. Hopefully by collaboration with their group and viewing others choices, they will be able to chose the proper important items.

__Seeing Reason__ - I will not use this tool for my project. I think this tool would be difficult for my students to use but if I gave them a very simple task dealing with something in reading, they could relate to characters in a story etc. For example, I'd probably have to demonstrate this in class (whole group) and then give them their factors to use. I think if they came up with their own factors they may get a bit out of control and get confused. If I gave them factors about water usage, they could decifer whether those factors positively or negatively effected our water supply.

__Showing Evidence__ - I will not use this tool for my project. This tool could be used for simple plans such as the Jack and the Bean stock. I could also see this being used as a prewrite activity for a persuasive paper. Before writing students could argue their point to be written about. For example, they could list reasons school uniforms would be a bad idea and defend their answers with this tool.