Lessons in Technology

This is a lesson plan I created in order to incorporate non-fiction reading with technology:

Lesson Plan:

Exploring Non-Fiction and Other Informational Media Sources

Connection: (1 minute)

We’ve been learning all about fiction in reading workshop but today we are going to switch gears into non-fiction reading.

Teaching Point: (5 minutes)

Today I want you to explore non-fiction texts on the internet.

The Hoop Dreams article will already be loaded for them.  I will teach them about each of the icons.

We know that non-fiction is made up of facts.  This website lets us explore these facts in a better way.  The triangle/play icon means that there is a video that you can view that will give you more information you won’t find in the actual article.  The button with the microphone on it will read the text to you.  The question mark will cause a question to pop up to make you think more about what you are learning.

Let’s try to use one of these icons.  Everyone click on the triangle button at the bottom of the screen.  Watch the video. What did we learn from watching this?

Active Engagement: (20 minutes)

Now it’s your turn to explore this article on your own.  As you explore, make notes on your organizer and think about the questions and what this article is teaching you.

Link: (4 minutes)

What are some of the things that you learned from this article?

What did you write down?

Discuss the organizer and the questions.

Assessment: (20 minutes)

Back in the classroom, I will distribute the piece on Sacajawea.  I will read it to the students to account for reading difficulty but allow them to complete the instructions on their own.

Background Information
Content: What is the content you are teaching and what are the big ideas? What are the challenging concepts that students struggle with or are difficult to teach? Consider your state standards (GLCEs or HSCEs) as you develop the essential questions you are trying to address.	Standards: Students will be able to identify the main topic and retells key details in a text. Students will be able to connect and describe individuals, events, ideas, or pieces of information in a text. Students will be able to determine meaning of vocabulary phrases relative to topics or subjects. ISTE-3: Research and Information Fluency-Students will be able to apply digital tools to gather, evaluate and use information. Essential Questions: What is the main idea of this non-fiction article? What does the word tradition mean? What are some traditions that your family has? How do you think R.J. Lopez feels during his performances? Why do you think that? Predicted Difficulties: This will be one of the first teaching moments with non-fiction this year.  They are allowed to shop for non-fiction books in their bedside table book bags but they have not yet examined non-fiction closely.  This will be difficult for some of them because they are not used to evaluating the structure of non-fiction texts. Some students will also have trouble with the reading because they struggle with the English language.
Pedagogy: What pedagogical strategies are you using and why? What theories of learning inform your strategies? What learner characteristics did you take into consideration?	My lesson uses inquiry based learning because the kids are exploring non-fiction while simultaneously learning to use technology for academic research.  I am using constructivist theories of learning so that the students can learn at their own pace while I am monitoring and controlling the content they have access to. I took reading difficulty into consideration for this lesson.  This includes English language learners.
Content & Pedagogy: How do these particular strategies help you teach the content mentioned above? Why choose these strategies over other approaches? Are there any technical or physical constraints that figured significantly into your choices?	The technology that I am using allows for a large amount of differentiation among readers of varying levels.  There is audio available for the non-fiction and students have the entire time to learn at a pace that is right for them. I chose this strategy because it is easier to differentiate, it is grade level appropriate and it works for the very wide range of abilities in my lesson.
Technology: What technology will you be using and why? Is the use of this technology absolutely necessary to achieve your objective? That is, would be impossible to teach the lesson without it? Remember that content specific technology (e.g., probes, graphing calculators, Geometer’s Sketchpad, United Streaming videos) are used to teach a content-specific concepts, whereas content-general technologies (e.g., Flash animation, Web 2.0 technologies) may facilitate deeper understanding by allowing students to manipulate information, explore a “network of ideas,” and investigate multiple representations of material.	I’m going to be using Time for Kids Online.  This technology combines digital issues of TFK as well as other media and audio to supplement the stories the magazine is featuring. It is not absolutely necessary to use this technology in order to achieve my goal but it will allow the students to hopefully come to a deeper understanding of how they can evaluate and gather information. It will also make it easier for those students with reading deficiencies to understand the text itself.
Technology & Pedagogy: How does the technology you have chosen fit with your pedagogical strategies and theories about learning? What types of learning strategies are employed by the technology?	The technology fits perfectly with my pedagogical approach.  Students are encouraged to do more than just read about a certain topic but they are also provided with other media sources such as video, picture, vocabulary, and further higher level questioning that goes beyond the text.
Technology & Content: How does your choice of technology help you teach the "big ideas" and address the essential questions underlying the concept your lesson addresses?	The technology is very helpful with the content because it offers audio for each piece of text including the vocabulary blurbs.  It also offers additional pieces of media to supplement the big ideas of the featured story.  These elements will allow the students deeper knowledge and resources to answer the essential questions.
Assessment: What do you want your students to know, and how will you know when they know it?  How will you assess what students have learned?  What role does technology play in these assessments?	The article comes with a worksheet that relates to the topic of the feature article.  I am planning on giving this to the students to see if they can apply what they’ve learned while researching the actual Time for Kids article. They will also be filling out an organizer during their research that follows the essential questions.

Digital Story: Reversible & Irreversible Changes in Matter

I used the art of talking to help my students through misconceptions about changes in matter.  Check out how they did:

Checking for Understanding

Check out my podcast with my students about the states of matter:

Students' Understanding of Matter

PQ + CQ > IQ

Make Something, With Something...Be Creative.

Creativity and passion go hand in hand with education.  If a teacher is not passionate...teaching with be difficult.  If a teacher is not creative...teaching will be difficult.  Technology opens up an endless world of creativity and passion.  I use both every day in my job as a second grade teacher...take a look...

Wordle

Communities of Practice

After creating and sending out a survey asking about how teachers utilize technology I learned that technology in my building and district is being used but not to its fullest ability.  Many teachers use SMART boards but when making that statement in the survey they followed up with something vague, like I use mine for EVERYTHING.  What is everything?  How does it help you in getting your students to their learning goals?  Many teachers use their computers for personal use when it comes to their teaching jobs for things like attendance, lesson plans, grading, etc.  Some use laptops and internet to help their students go deeper with their learning.  But teachers who don't have a full class such as reading interventionists and resource room teachers seemed a little lost when it comes to ways of integrating technology into their work.
A trend that I saw was that many teachers were unsure of what to ask when it comes to what they want to learn or what they want to know more about.  It seemed that educators are unaware of what is out there in terms of what could help them with their students involving technology.  One comment was that a teacher was curious about how a SMART board can be used as more than just a fancy white board - I think it's unfair that some teachers know all the tips and tricks to having something like a SMART board and some teachers don't know how to turn one on. I was kind of shocked that more teachers were not curious about the iPad.  This technology would be PERFECT for teachers who work one on one with students. The truth seems to be that their just isn't enough education for teachers involving educational technology.  Also, the wealth isn't being shared.  Teachers need this kind of learning to be successful and it is so uneven within buildings and districts.  How are we supposed to ensure that all students are getting the same quality education when it is so different from district to district or even building to building within the same district?

Getting a Balanced Diet of Information

I will be the first to admit that my infodiet is very imbalanced.  For quite some time I have been told to read a newspaper or look up articles online so that I know what's happening in the world.  As an educator I have fought this with excuses like "I don't have time to sit down and read," or "It's not interesting to me," or "I just don't want to."  With this being said, understanding current events IS important for educators.  I also have a hard time hearing things and sorting through important vs. not.  Take what happened at Sandy Hook for instance, I was completely captivated by those horrible events, but because I don't listen to the news, I believed EVERYTHING I was told and much of the information surrounding that tragedy was incorrect on the first day.  To fix this problem of hearing and passing along information that may or may not be true I used this assignment to "get in the know."  I began following @CNN on Twitter.  This way I'm finding out news and understanding real world issues around me and I'm not sifting through the viewpoints of others.  Due to the fact that news stations are biased based on politics, I began following @FoxNews as well to get multiple viewpoints.

Politics is another topic that is crucial to education that puts me out of my comfort zone.  I vote democrat based on my career and I'm not a fan of Michigan's current governor.  I'm not saying I'm eager to get into any political debates but it would be nice to be able to defend myself on issues related to education.  For this reason, I chose to also follow @CSPAN to keep myself updated on politics and information.  Something else that can help me stay informed and give me some things to talk about and understand is the Michigan Department of Education, @mieducation.  I think that this is a good decision for my infodiet because I don't pay attention to things that are probably really useful pieces of information.  For example, I had absolutely no idea that Common Core Standards were being questioned and put on hold in the state of Michigan. What? Why?  I have been working so hard to understand them and teach them and gain success for my students with these standards and now and the end of the first year...we're reconsidering.  It was shocking but interesting information that I did not know because I've been too busy using my free time to figure out what's going on, on Facebook.

I also wanted to use this assignment to find out more about technology in order to take it to my students.  I'm constantly worried about what I'm teaching, how I'm teaching, should I have done it this way or tried it that way, what's going to happen next year with my students, are they ready for 3rd grade, the MEAP is happening to them next year...  It's always on my mind, how can I make them more prepared?  I found this page on Twitter called Next Generation Learning Challenges, @NextGenLC.  This page has a wealth of information that I am excited to sift through.  I appreciated the research I got to do with this assignment and it helped me realize that if anything, I at least WANT to be interested.



Technology for Students with ADHD

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a growing problem in classrooms.  ADHD is a disorder that inhibits the executive functioning in individuals; in other words, it affects how people are able to self regulate their emotions and behaviors.  Little is known about the causes of ADHD but studies have lead to several possible explanations.  In one study that researches the relationship between ADHD and family environment and parenting practices discovered a higher amount of ADHD cases in students who come from families with lower levels of organization and higher levels of conflict (Schroeder & Kelley, 2008).  Children learn the ability to control themselves, first, in their most familiar environment.  Schroeder and Kelley firmly present findings that environment and genetics is a huge factor in students with ADHD. 

The affects of ADHD in children are many.  One of the biggest affects on students is academic performance and social relationships.  Students with attention problems are limited in their opportunities to acquire social skills through observational learning. Students with ADHD also miss out on learning opportunities in the classroom whether is be because they are disruption and are removed or because of inattention and missing the experience (Kawabata, Tseng, & Shur-Fen Gau, 2011).  Teachers, myself included, can be guilty of removing a distracting child from the classroom if it becomes so big that it is taking from more than just the child's educational experiences.  As an educator, it is hard to find the correct response to a child who can not control his/her ability to pay attention.

One possible solution to this issue in education is the multiple intelligence approach.  Students with ADHD are often underserved in an education system (Schiduan, Case, & Faryniarz, 2002).  Each and every student is smart in some way, even those with ADHD.  It is hard for those students with ADHD to shine because they are typically smart in ways that aren't noticed in a traditional classroom (Schiduan, Case, & Faryniarz, 2002).

The multiple intelligence approach to ADHD would be easy to do using technology.  However, because of the diverse nature of the approach and of each student with ADHD, there is not one program that would suffice for everyone.  Luanne Eris Fose, Ph.D has outlined several technology resources that can aide in students with various intelligences. In my classroom, I have a student who is not diagnosed but exhibits many of the symptoms that I have read about.  This student makes very obnoxious noises a great deal of the school day and has a very hard time controlling his body, he's always wiggling.  He also has a hard time making and maintaining relationships with other students and he has frequent angry outbursts about very minor incidents.  I have noticed that he works his hardest with complex math and focuses the most with this subject.  He also pays a great deal of attention to detail and likes games like Pokemon and Ninjago which deal with logic and skill.  I'm going to label him as a Logical-Mathematical Learner.  These learners are very good with numbers, math, and logic to understand patterns (Fose, 3).  Something like PuzzleMaker might be helpful with a student like mine.  It gives him the time and to dissect and create a problem to solve using the logical skills he possesses but does not often get to use in class every day.  Something else that may help this student, although it is more related to the Verbal/Linguistic form of intelligence is Shadow Poetry.  There are several forms of technology that can be used to support each intelligence, which can in turn help students with ADHD, if teachers are willing to find out more about their students in order to help them.

Citations:

Kawabata, Y., Tseng, W. L., & Shur-Fen Gau, S. (2011). Symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and social and school adjustment: The moderating rules of age and parenting. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 40(2), 177-188. 

 Schirduan, V., Case, K., & Faryniarz, J. (2002). How adhd students are smart. The Educational Forum, 66(4), 324-328.

Schroeder, V. M., & Kelley, M. L. (2008). Associations between family environment, parenting practices, and executive functioning of children with and without adhd. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 18(2), 227-235.