I recently had the opportunity to learn a little bit more about lesson plans and the most effective way to write them. This lesson plan was different from what I am used to because the format was a little different. Instead of creating three centers for the children to work in, I focused on integrating technology into the lesson. In the past, I have written lesson plans that included a little bit of technology. For example, I have used a SmartBoard to write children's predictions about a story. The SmartBoard allowed me to write in front of the kindergarten class, which is very important because young children need to see writing modeled. While I have included technology in my lesson plans in the past, I have never written a lesson plan with technology being one of the big focuses.
The journey of this lesson plan began a couple of weeks ago with Tennessee Curriculum Standards. I was assigned a Web2.0 tool to investigate and learn about. I learned much about Voki and how it is being used in the classroom by both teachers and students. I also created a student sample of what I imagined the students knowing as a result of the lesson I had just taught. For this assignment, I focused on second grade reading standards. I made the student sample as a response to a novel that the child had just finished reading. After demonstrating for my class how to use Voki, as well as learning from my classmates about other great Web2.0 tools, I learned about another step in the journey. This step involved the work I did for Voki. I was to write a lesson that I imagined myself teaching that would lead up to the students responding on Voki. The Voki would be used as an assessment tool. I could watch the students' finished avatars from Voki to see what they had learned. I made the assessment piece before I actually wrote the lesson. As you can see, I came in the back door with this assignment. It almost seems like an opposite way of doing things, but I think that it worked out very well. Since the assessment piece was already made, I understood what I wanted the students to learn. Because of this, I was able to design the lesson in a way that I could make sure that the students were learning what I wanted them to learn, as demonstrated by their responses on Voki.
It was a great refresher for me to review how to write effective lesson plans. There are several steps in a written lesson plan, and it is important that we are familiar with each step. One new aspect for me on this lesson plan was the addition of Bloom's Taxonomy. According to Bloom, there are six levels of thinking and they are arranged in an hierarchy. The lowest level of thinking is knowledge, followed by understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It is very helpful to look at the different verbs that go with each level. These verbs are very helpful to include in the objectives portion of the lesson plan. I also enjoyed having the opportunity to learn about the integration of technology. This was very helpful to me because it was a fairly new experience for me.
Click here to see my finished lesson plan.
What about you? How do you integrate technology in some of your lessons? I'd love to hear your ideas!
The journey of this lesson plan began a couple of weeks ago with Tennessee Curriculum Standards. I was assigned a Web2.0 tool to investigate and learn about. I learned much about Voki and how it is being used in the classroom by both teachers and students. I also created a student sample of what I imagined the students knowing as a result of the lesson I had just taught. For this assignment, I focused on second grade reading standards. I made the student sample as a response to a novel that the child had just finished reading. After demonstrating for my class how to use Voki, as well as learning from my classmates about other great Web2.0 tools, I learned about another step in the journey. This step involved the work I did for Voki. I was to write a lesson that I imagined myself teaching that would lead up to the students responding on Voki. The Voki would be used as an assessment tool. I could watch the students' finished avatars from Voki to see what they had learned. I made the assessment piece before I actually wrote the lesson. As you can see, I came in the back door with this assignment. It almost seems like an opposite way of doing things, but I think that it worked out very well. Since the assessment piece was already made, I understood what I wanted the students to learn. Because of this, I was able to design the lesson in a way that I could make sure that the students were learning what I wanted them to learn, as demonstrated by their responses on Voki.
It was a great refresher for me to review how to write effective lesson plans. There are several steps in a written lesson plan, and it is important that we are familiar with each step. One new aspect for me on this lesson plan was the addition of Bloom's Taxonomy. According to Bloom, there are six levels of thinking and they are arranged in an hierarchy. The lowest level of thinking is knowledge, followed by understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. It is very helpful to look at the different verbs that go with each level. These verbs are very helpful to include in the objectives portion of the lesson plan. I also enjoyed having the opportunity to learn about the integration of technology. This was very helpful to me because it was a fairly new experience for me.
Click here to see my finished lesson plan.
What about you? How do you integrate technology in some of your lessons? I'd love to hear your ideas!
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