Lesson Plan #1 Essay

I have written my first real lesson plan. It was interesting to write one after all the classes and practice. I knew where to find the content standards, I found the one that fit my intended lesson plan, I filled it out with a method using a group learning technique called the jigsaw, I included writing a rubric with the students to use as an assessment tool and the interactive student notebook to get the students to journal about the work and its outcome.

I believe NETS*T 3., Modeling Digital-Age Work and Learning, paragraph a.iv, would apply to this lesson. I would be modeling and facilitating “…effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning (International Society for Technology in Education, 2008).” In the lesson plan the students will be researching using the Internet, creating a spreadsheet of data, questioning that data, and developing a knowledgeable presentation to transmit their findings to the rest of the class.

At this point the lesson plan is a simple job of finding data and analyzing it through the use of a spreadsheet. The students work in teams to do this. One possibility to make this more challenging would be to have them come up with the headings for the data without my prompts. They could brainstorm the headings and information. It has to be the same for each group so they would have to work together to make sure they are all working with either apples or oranges.

To accommodate students with disabilities, since I chose a speech impairment as the learning disability, I would give the student time to formulate answers to any questions. I would monitor that student’s group to make sure the other members are treating him with respect and tolerance, I would have already worked to make the classroom a welcoming and relaxed arena in which he could excel.

I like this assignment because it is one step in a long term path to the students understanding the position the USA has in the world today. Over several disconnected lessons I will cover the basic events that the USA was involved in and lead the students to connect those lessons into an understanding of how we became the militaristic nation we have become.

I would like to be able to get outside the box and do more with the lesson and get the kids farther into the technology available to them.

Sources:

International Society for Technology in Education, . (2008). Nets for teachers 2008. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers/nets-for-teachers-2008.aspx