Bandelier-spiders

 Celia Bandelier Fiesta 7 PowerPoint Starter on Spiders The Roanoke Elementary School third grade teachers assign a report on spiders every year. So every year, we at the Roanoke Public Library get anxious parents with their third graders entering the library frantically searching for information on spiders. Because of that, we are always in the market for informative, inexpensive books on specific spider types.

The following PowerPoint starter is to assist in this assignment and to suggest a way to modify the assignment from the way they have done it in the past. The current method is typing or finding; copying or printing; cutting out the items to be added and pasting them to posterboard to form a spider poster. The method suggested by this starter template is a way the assignment could be updated using modern technology of Microsoft Office's PowerPoint. PowerPoint is on all of the Roanoke Elementary School computers as well as all of the Roanoke Public Library's computers. This PowerPoint template method would engage the children in learning about not only spiders, but how to communicate that new found knowledge using computers which is what their future education and employment is likely to require. This method would also relieve the parents of the cost of printing/copying the information and pictures and buying the posterboard and glue to complete the poster which is sometimes problem for parents. This PowerPoint starter could also easily be changed and/or modified for other projects and learning opportunities. The Spider Starter begins with an empty template. The template starts with a title page identifying the area or region the spider is found and a place for the student’s name, class, teacher, and date. The students are required to find a picture of the spider and basic information on the spider. (The basic information suggested by the template could easily be changed and adjusted by the teacher if they want the student to find different information than suggested.) This template can be used to study any spiders anywhere in the world that such information can be found.  The template requires the student to identify the two (2) sources of information they used to obtain their facts on each spider type. These sources of information can be in the form of author and title of a book or a URL of a website on the Internet.  The first example is spiders from Indiana since that is the state the students I am aiming this starter at live. 

The second example is spiders of California because that is the farthest away in the continental U.S. and thus far removed from Indiana spiders. NOTE: The empty spider template also includes step-by-step written instructions for filling out the template in the Notes section and also an audio version of those instructions. These instructions are not included on the sample PowerPoint of Indiana spiders nor PowerPoint of California spiders since they are examples of the finished assignment product.