Geology Trip

We live near the border of Oman and went for a drive through the mountains there. The drive was not initially intended to be a field trip, but I did ask Kyle to bring some books along. He brought a Rock and Fossil book and a Geography book. During the drive we decided to make the trip a geology outing. We stopped along the way several times to analyze the rock formations. We stopped at an old coral reef, now high and dry, that has a number of fossils. We didn't go on a full fossil hunt, but just photographed the old reefs and looked at the structure. We then stopped at an interesting outcropping with clearly defined vertical layers. We climbed around it some before getting back on the road. Our next stop was a wadi, a dry river bed. The walls of the wadi are over twenty feet high and are a good example of water erosion. We also found some nice smooth rocks to contrast nicely with the jagged rocks we usually find in the mountains.

Our drive took us up into the mountains and it became difficult to stop, but along the way we talked about the different formations we saw. It would have been nice to have a real geologist on the trip with us, as my knowledge of geology is limited to Geology I twenty years ago. The drive through the mountains is pleasant. They are now paving what used to be an off-road route. This makes the trip easier, but opens the mountains up to more tourist and more traffic. As a reward for Kyle's hard work, we ate at the hotel in Hatta, the town at the end of the mountain road.

Kyle created a photo slide show of our trip. He choose the photos (with some input from me, or every picture would have him in it) and added transitions between the photos.

Note: It took Kyle a few months to complete this post. The writing has been slow going, but now he is more motivated. The post does not include the slide show. Writing next to a picture seems to work better. It gives him a static visual reference for his writing.

Al Ain Zoo: Mammals and Continents

Kyle's Report

Trip: Our local zoo

Goal: See how many different mammals we could find for each continent

Materials:
1. Graph with all 7 continents listed on the vertical axis
2. Graph with some of the mammals we expected to see at the zoo on the vertical axis and the 7 continents on the horizontal axis.

Process:
1. Find the mammals.
2. Read the distribution data for the mammals to see which continent they live on.
3. Add information to the graphs.

Blog:
1. Use online graph making tool to design the graph.
2. Write a paragraph on the data.

Questions to Guide Kyle in Writing a Paragraph:
Where did we go?
What type of animals did we research?
Which continents had the most mammals?
Which continent had the least mammals?
Which mammal lived on the most continents? Where did it live?

Skills & Knowledge Areas: Classification of Animals, Graphs, Addition, Geography, Reading (Scanning), Technology, Writing

Comments: The animal placards contained detailed information on animal distribution, so Kyle had to know that the Sahara was in Africa or that Sri Lanka was in Asia to get the information he needed. Surprisingly, he needed little help handling this.

Rules for Kyle's Posts

1. I do not edit his writing. I do comment and guide him to make changes. I will teach him about things he might not have much experience with, like spacing when typing or comma usage.

2. He must read through his post several times. I want him to identify his own mistakes, which he usually does when he rereads his work.

3. I help him spell words after he makes several unsuccessful attempts. If he can't manage to spell the word phonetically and he doesn't come close enough for spell check to help out I lead him to the answer. For example, he couldn't spell "because" phonetically. I lead him to replace "k" with "c", but had to tell him the "au" and "e."

4. He must read the comments and answer any questions in the comments.

Kyle's First Post

Kyle Reports Post: Desert Trip

Question and Answers: I wrote the questions for Kyle with the goal of guiding him into writing a paragraph. We didn't get to the paragraph stage and will build to that in the future.

Grammar and Spelling: Kyle used the spell checker to help him with his spelling. It resulted in one mistake. He wrote "snack" for "snake." He also didn't understand why "smores" was registering as a misspelled word.

Video: I added a video to the entry. I watched a few segments of CNN with Kyle and had him listen to how they reporter talked. I asked him to try to talk like the reporter when adding his voice to the video.

Comments: Kyle was excited to read the comments. I told him that he was responsible for answering questions in the comments. He answered the first question fine, but minimally. I explained the need for him to give answers with explanations so that he could be understood better.