The lesson plan assignment that Adam and I did was an introductory lesson on tornadoes. The lesson consisted of around four parts. The beginning of the lesson is an open discussion format to guide the students into the lesson. They will share their personal experiences of tornado encounters or damage. The use of this activity is to help make the lesson more concrete. They will be reflecting on their personal experiences and listening to fellow peers experiences making the topic more "real".
The next activity will be for the class to watch a short abc news video on the Joplin, MO tornado. They will hear statistics on the tornado and during or after the video will be posting to twitter their thoughts on the video or what they have heard about the Joplin tornado. We are requiring a minimum of two tweets so that we can be sure all students took the time to reflect and think about what they saw. This would also serve as an informal assessment to take note if a student is slightly "checked out" at the time. Adam and I felt that the use of the video and twitter technology is a way to create interactive experiences. It also encourages the "class" to reflect (tweet) upon the content. We then will open up the floor to discuss briefly some of the students comments to be sure to encourage face-to-face reflection.
The next part of the lesson is where the majority of the information on tornadoes, in general, will occur. A google doc will be shared with the class and consist of four questions to help guide the lesson on tornadoes. A tech struggle may be that middle school aged students (which was are target "class") do not have an email account. However, there is an option to post to a google document by going to the URL. For our presentation we will be sharing via email because our class is comfortable with that method. The other tech struggle is that if using google doc for the first time or relatively new to the students the space and entering your information may seem difficult when numerous people are trying to answer close to the same spot. Thus, it may get "congested" if they do not space out their responses. This would be addressed by simply reminding the students to give themselves space to reply. The students would break into groups and answer the assigned question through research and/or their own personal knowledge. This is a good way to encourage group work via google doc. Also, it will be a good way to assess what the students already know by those that reply quickly with personal knowledge. We would also remind them to include sources for researched information. Thus, anything without a source is assumed to be personal knowledge which would be used to gauge what the students know. The use of personal knowledge is a way to encourage the students to reflect upon or make connections with content. The students may know about their groups question but may need to "dig" into their brain and retrieve it. The class would then discuss the four questions with someone from their group telling the class the summary of their answer. As a class they will teach each other, with help from the teacher, about tornadoes.
The final section will be a mini project where the students will investigate a specific tornado. They will pretend that they are reporting on the tornado. They will do brief research and find images, videos, and information about the tornado and compile it into an email and send it to the lesson's posterous account. The use of posterous is a way to manage the students use of the technology by allowing the posts to be visible and having the ability to go through their email entry indepth following the class time. Again this use of technology will give a concrete experience for the students to understand the possible severity of tornadoes. Posterous will also push the students to engage in an increased level of student thinking. They will have to learn about the tornado while using what was previously discussed about tornadoes to analyze theirs. They will also have the ability to create a product to help them describe their specific tornado. After they submit their tornado research we will open up to the class and ask a few of the them to share their information while displaying their posterous post on the projector. A way to assess the students will also be to note the terms and way in which they discuss their tornado. If they use just visual descriptions and do not use the concepts previously discussed they did not truly understand or take up what was presented.
Thus, the use of all the different technologies (twitter, video, google doc, projector, computer, posterous, and etc..) were to give the students the ability to be active while learning. Some students do well with certain technologies so we used a variety of different approaches to try and maintain and increase the students learning ability. We also felt that keeping them moving will help maintain their attention span on the topic. In conclusion, the use of the technologies used were not just for technology sake but so that numerous approaches could be utilized to increase the level of student learning.
......Alyson.........
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