Lesson #1 - Phase II

Instructional Decisions / Teaching (InTask Standard #9):

For my first technology lesson, I was surprised that a lot went well.  I honestly, didn't have much that went wrong.  I made sure going in that I was extremely prepared and that all of my links worked.  The students were really entertained by the fact that the Prezi presentation was a mountain and matched our lesson theme of Mount Everest.

From my peer feedback survey, the main tips that peers had for me were to explain the instructions a little more, to walk the students through some of the fun facts on the Mount Everest panorama website, and to give an example of how to take these fun facts to create a question for their scavenger hunt.  The picture below shows the little fun facts that I am talking about.  When the student scrolls over the various question marks on the panorama website, they bring up various fun facts.

As I taught, I made sure to continuously be thinking about what the goals and objectives of the lesson were.  I feel like I met them really well.  The students used the Mount Everest panorama website in order to create an online scavenger hunt.  The students were able to locate specific peaks on the panorama website and use addition and/or subtraction to find the difference (pictured later in this posting).  Finally, the students were able to critically think about the Mount Everest area in order to discuss what may happen if environmental changes occur and what adaptations people and animals need in order to live in this area (also pictured later in this posting).  All of these objectives were shown within the scavenger hunts the students created.

The only modification that I made during my implementation was the fact that I went through the Prezi powerpoint faster than I would have with an actual 4th grade class.  Since, my "students" were actually in college, they had some previous knowledge of Mount Everest and we were able to go through the presentation faster.  This also allowed them more time to complete their scavenger hunts.  In an actual 4th grade classroom, I would also have to make this a longer lesson.  There is no way that I would be able to cover all of the material and still provide them time to do their scavenger hunts in just 30 minutes.  In addition, I also thought about providing another class period where they could complete each others' scavenger hunts.  This would give them even more time to explore the Mount Everest panorama website and more practice on the math objective and critical thinking.



Mechanics:

During my lesson, each student had access to a computer.  We used the internet and Google Forms throughout this lesson.  They used the internet to access the Mount Everest panorama website and Google Forms was used to create the students' scavenger hunts.  Below is a picture of the beginning of my lesson when we were going over the presentation.

The lesson I implemented was within the correct time frame, because I made sure to watch the clock and make sure I was on time.  I continuously assessed where the students were in their project.  I walked around and made sure that the students were on task and working.  If they had questions I would answer them right away.  This helped me to stay on time, because I didn't let the students sit there confused and fall behind schedule.  



Assessment of Learning (InTask Standard #6):

When working on their scavenger hunt projects, my students used the checklist provided in my last blog.  They worked on creating questions that reflect each criteria.  They did not have enough time to fully complete their scavenger hunts.  However, from the questions that they included, I could tell that they were definitely on the right track.  You could tell that they understood what the criteria of the project was.  With more time, I would like to believe that all of the students would have met all of the criteria listed within the assessment checklist.  Instead of doing a formal assessment, such as a test, at the end of this lesson, I used the following checklist to assess the knowledge that students gained from this lesson.

Below are pictures of each of my students' (peers) scavenger hunts.  Below each picture, I will discuss what this student has accomplished during this lesson.  Again, these are just the beginning of them.  With an actual 4th grade class, I would have provided even more time for the students to complete these projects.

Many of the students have included at least one of the two questions required for each of the checklist objectives.  I would like to point out that I did not require the students to do any particular type of questions.  I wanted them to explore Google Forms and see what all they could do with it.  Some did short answer questions, multiple choice, yes/no, and mark all that apply questions.  Some students chose to do all the same type of question, while others did all types of questions.  Either way, they are testing all of the objectives within the checklist.

I would say that overall this lesson was a huge success for both the students and me as the teacher.  Through this lesson we covered many standards from all different types of subjects.  Like mentioned previously, I did not really get any bad comments from my peers that participated in this lesson.  They only had a few tips, but nothing mandatory.  The tips they gave me included explaining the instructions a little more, walking the students through some of the fun facts on the Mount Everest panorama website, and giving an example of how to take these fun facts to create a question for their scavenger hunt.  These are all easy things that I can add or fix for the next time I teach this lesson.