Vanishing Rainforests Conference

Two weeks ago, our five 4th Grade classes participated in a Vanishing Rainforests conference at JIS. We held the conference to give the students an authentic experience, researching and presenting research to fellow ‘experts’ in the same field.

 To prepare for the conference, children had to choose between 9 topics related to the destruction of the Rainforest: Palm Oil, Global Warming, Pasture land for cattle, Soybean Production, Mining, Rainforest Products, Rainforest Peoples, Endangered Animals and Logging. I created a website to help give them some guidance with their research Vanishing Rainforests. 

After researching and taking notes in pairs, the children wrote an individual report. They then had to work with their partner to turn this in to a presentation for the conference, wit most of the opting to use Keynote to make their presentation. The conference opened with this video made from video footage supplied by one of our JIS teachers who also works for integratedconservation.org and by Marcey Bailey, one of our 4th grade teachers, and photos she took on her recent trip to see the orangutans in Kalimantan.


   



The conference participants then broke off into 11 groups to present their research topic to their small group, all of whom had different presentation topics. Question and answer sessions were held at the end of each presentation. When all the groups were finished the participants were able to go to the hospitality room and enjoy a cup of tea or juice. The students loved this and you could see they throughly enjoyed the 'refreshments' part if the conference - don't we all?

  In the afternoon the conference delegates broke off into groups with others who had been researching the same topic e.g. all the people who had been researching Palm Oil production got together. These groups discussed solutions to their rainforest problem. They brainstormed ideas and then chose their top 2 and created an action plan for how they were going to work towards solving the problem. A spokesperson from each group then fed back to the whole group back in the theatre. 

The conference was ended with a Rainforest buffet of assorted tropical fruits and chocolate. The children reflected on the conference and blogged about it.


 Here is an example of one of the presentations. When creating their presentation, it was a great way to introduce Creative Commons images and we directed them to use www.photopin.com for images.

Overall the conference was a great success. it took a lot of work for the students to research their projects, put together their presentations and practise them, but it was worth it. The students learned lots of new skills: using Keynote and finding Creative Common images and refined some 'old' skills including researching, note taking, presenting in front of an audience. They had to collaborate on the presentations and be effective communicators when attending the conference. All in all it was an authentic way for them to practise these skills and get to share their ideas with other 4th grade classes.