The Incredible Edible Orange Project

1. Timeline:

Mar. 5: Discussed with students developing an internet project based on chemistry unit.

Mar. 12-14: Children discussed possible project ideas and came up with orange project.

Mar. 19: Outlined project with children.

Mar. 28: Final draft written.

April 9: Project was submitted to Global Schoolhouse NetworkÕs Hilites board

April 14-May 2: Students checked email to see how many classes had joined the project.

May 2: Students emailed participants that they were part of the Orange Project.

May 5-23: Project results will come in. Students are mapping the classes involved.

May 12-28: Students will create a spreadsheet and design a homepage to display the results of the project. They will send an email to all participants.

2. Data collected, type of analysis, conclusions:

The students are collecting data on the percentage of edible orange to inedible parts. They are looking at types of oranges (i.e. blood, navel, California, etc), and price to determine how much waste is involved. The children will design a spreadsheet, graphs, and a home page to display data and ask classes for conclusions. We have only received two schoolÕs data, so we are waiting for everyone to report before we make any conclusions. We did discover a type of orange we hadnÕt heard of, so we will ask our orange expert.

3. What you would change if you could:

If I do this project over I will do it earlier in the year. I would also not give the students so much freedom to design the project. This took the bulk of the second semester although the experience was valuable for the children and gave me lots of data for assessment on the kids.

4. List of participants:

Kathy Haupt W. S. Sandel Elementary School	Vincent Carbone North Stratfield School
Michelle Donofry Germantown Academy	Bill Tobin/Pam Casey West Valley Central School
Mr. Facio Miramonte Elementary School	Lisa Wilkison George Earle Elementary
Penny Molnar Littlebrook School	C.Hinshaw Birchwood Elementary
Lynn Borries West Jr. High	Jan Stec Vandenberg Elementary School
Birgit Bergquist Torsviks School	Gloria Jordan Joyner Elementary School
Mrs. Nancy Haslam Brooklawn Middle School	Kathy Iuliano Far Hills Country Day School
Ellie Degiorgio-Hudson Aviano Elementary School	Denise Swope St. Mary Byzantine School

5. Describe how students were involved in this project:

This project was designed by my small group of gifted and talented students after working on a chemistry unit that was interrupted by the 5th grade science performance test. We did a practice test with oranges that involved finding the fraction of edible orange to inedible orange. I wanted to do a project that examined the amount of Vitamin C found in various brands of orange juice, but the kids thought that was boring old news. They also wanted to do the M&M project again this year, so it turned out to be a good extension and gave them practice finding percentage. They came up with the name and the object. They also decided on the the number of participants (25) and designed the procedure. The students argued over creating spreadsheets or graphs and decided to do both with the data. They want to do a spreadsheet that will allow the classes to find percentages and create a web page to display the results using AOLpress. Everything is being done in Clarisworks.

After the project was up on the Hilites board, a child would check my email during each class time to see if we had anyone signed up. They kept track of the letters and then sent each class an email notifying them that they were invited to participate in the project.

Before you start to think that these kids are super students, I feel I must explain that I have had this group of multi-age gifted kids for 2-3 years and they have been involved in several projects. Their grade levels range from third through fifth. Half of the class is in Young Astronauts and have been participating in the NASA Internet Initiatives Passport to Knowledge projects during the last two years. They also worked on the Great Lakes Navigators project. They were ready to design a project fairly independently.

Describe how the teacher was involved in this lesson:

Many times I acted as the administrative assistant and gopher. Hopefully, I was coach who helped them become more independent using technology. I moderated their debates and helped them learn to come to consensus on a project. The educational objectives were designed by me and I typed their project in the format required by Global Schoolhouse Network. I sent it in the Hilites since the children are so used to email that it wouldn't have been a teachable moment. As the letters from schools were printed, I organized them and had a copy made for each child. I also have them color a map showing the state where each school is located. My involvement is going to increase next week as we move into learning about spreadsheets and computer generated graphs. The design of the web page will have to be teacher guided, too.