Tables for organizing research

Today's lesson had two goals:

• Research John Holland's 6 personality traits for careers.
• Introduce how to use TABLES to organize information.

Before I started the lesson, I asked students to log into Moodle and answer a one question survey about their previous knowledge of how to use tables. The results were:

• I have never used tables before - 2 students
• I've used tables before but don't know how to create or modify them - 4 students
• I could figure out how to use tables with help - 3 students
• I know how to create and modify tables - 8 students
• Tables are awesome - I use them all the time - 0 students

This information was very helpful to me when I later started the demonstration because I focused my extra help on the students who were unfamiliar with tables.

The Lesson:

I asked students look google "john holland" + career and see what information is listed. The students quickly found out that John Holland was a researcher who organized careers by personality traits: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, conventional. Students bookmarked several sites for further investigation.

I introduced the idea of using a table in Word to organize information. Students created a 8x3 table as I demonstrated how to merge & split cells, make cells larger or smaller, and add columns or rows.

The students then used the information from the various sources to write a description of each personality trait and list some careers in that category.

Observation:

• All students were actively engaged in the research of personality traits.
• Most students access 2-3 websites for their information.
• Those students who were not familiar with tables asked for some specific assistance but most of the students did not have any difficulty creating the tables.
• I only observed two students copying and pasting information from the websites to their document - even though I asked them to put the information into their own words.