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Fourth: Let's share with the kids what we have found out and publish our book on line.
In this section, this activity will bring together all the concepts that have been studied and insure understanding of these concepts, by publishing a children's book. Since the students are demonstrating their knowledge by explaining it to a younger person, they will be restating their knowledge in such a way that the students must understand what they have learned in order to explain it to a younger student. This becomes a task that can undertaken by assigning parts, but there needs to be an opportunity for each student to verify what is being put into the online book (peer evaluation review of material). If web page writing capability is minimal or even unavailable, then each group may produce a book to be given perhaps to a school in the district (Students could microsoft office for text writing and draw graphics, if desired). This will need to be set up in advance of this project to ensure that the students work is seen by others, not just within the class. The web page is set up for groups to do parts of the book with peer review of the parts they did not specifically write, on the disk, using the notepad function. The history portion and the elements portions could be completed by two different groups and dividing those topics into smaller portions. The final group portions can be stored on their group disk for your final evaluation and used to produce the online book after the project is finished. A final group presentation of their work with justification of why information was chosen and included would be needed so the class has idea of what each group has completed. After that presentation, the students should then evaluate the work which has been presented, by reviewing each group's disk within the groups who worked together during this part of the project. However, the evaluation of the work should be done on an individual basis. This should be an actual paper to be handed in, unless journals are used, in which case, students could record their evaluations of the work in these journals using the online form as a guide for their responses. If the online book is not the goal for this project, then the book can be printed using those disk files from all the groups of students.
If portfolios are a tool of evaluation, perhaps each student could make a book either online using web pages or just "make one" for the portfolio. Again, each student should be given a separate disk to use for this purpose and the disk kept with the portfolio, along with the hard copy. In either case, this is the demonstration of and the final assessment of how well the students have grasped all the key concepts.
If this part is left out, another summative assessment which produces some product which is explaining about the Periodic Table and its development, or than a "term paper," needs to be used. The evaluation rubric used for this project includes a rubric for evaluation for individual students and their progress as they work in their for through the project. If the final product books are evaluated individually, another rubric may be desired. The following web site was used to develop the rubric for this project and could be used to develop any additional rubrics needed for this project. These evaluations could be kept as computer files, as a record the student evaluation process through this project, rather than printing and copying hard copies.