Integrating technology is only effective when the technology used supports what is being taught. Using technology just to be able to say you have used it is not fair to the students and only wastes time. It is important as teachers that we use technology as a tool instead of a crutch. To ensure that the lesson I had previously created used technology appropriately I have created a matrix to show how my standards and goals align with the technology I have used in my lesson. The lesson is titled “Understanding Imagery in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabell Lee”. To get an idea of the actual lesson I will breifly explain the main aspects of the lesson. The lesson contains three main components that will help the students understand and learn the content. The first component is the introduction of new material. This will come from a slide show presentation that explains the new information and includes visual examples. The second component of the lesson is guided practice. Here the teacher will demonstrate how to identify imagery in “Annabell Lee” by annotating the first stanza of the poem out loud to the class and then grouping the students to finishing annotating the poem together. The final component is a visual representation of what each student has learned. The student is instructed to create a storyboard online of the imagery they identified in the last three stanzas of the poem. The lesson is complete when the students participate in a group discussion online through the class wiki-page.
Because the lesson is on Imagery in Edgar Allan Poe poetry, the first standard addressed is to demonstrate the understanding of figurative language. This is where the students will access new information through direct teaching, visual and oral presentation and individual work. Most of these strategies for this standard are teacher focused because new information is being introduced. Here the teacher will use a Smart board to present a slide show of information about imagery and how to identify it. The students will also have a visual of a poem by Poe what has already been annotated in the first stanza as an example. The students will be expected to annotate the rest of the poem on their own and with peers eventually.
In order to promote communication in the classroom the students will engage in cooperative learning, peer teaching and peer assessment. This will be done mainly through the use of a class wiki-page to comment on the individual work the students create. The students will be instructed to assess each other’s final products (peer assessment) and use constructive criticism to guide their peers to fix the work (peer teaching). It is important for this step to be done thoroughly because each student is not only helping his or her peer but is also strengthening his or her own knowledge of the subject.
For a final product the students will work individually on a storyboard that depicts the imagery in the poem “Annabell Lee”. The storyboard will be created individually however, in order to get ideas for the storyboard the students will participate in small discussion groups. This portion of the lesson heavily relies on the student. The teacher is there to simply supervise. The students will utilize computers, the internet, the class wiki-page and an online storyboard creator to complete the final portion of the lesson. Each student should comment on at least 3 different peer projects. These comments are meant to ensure that the commenter understands the material and to ensure that the peer learns where improvement could be made. It is incredibly effective coming from peers because the students view them as equals. They are less embarrassed to ask questions and make comments to their peers rather than the teacher.
Although the technology used in my lesson may not be incredibly advanced, it is effective and useful. The students will benefit from the technology used because the technology does not take away from the main content. The technology used also makes the learning aspect fun for the students and is not too difficult for the students to understand. This reduces the risk of losing students to boredom or frustration.
Your first sentence could not be more correct. Having technology just to say that you have it in the curriculum will do absolutely nothing for the students. While there are some other examples of more "advanced" technology in other lesson plans, what is presented here is very effective, and would definitely get the job done if this were to ever become a real lesson. There is a good balance here of cooperative learning and individual assignments, and the storyboard idea seems like it could be a very interesting one.
ReplyDeleteAlexandria, your technology integration plan flows well and makes logical sense. I like how you are explicit about your pedagogical moves. I have several questions about your matrix and narrative: What grade level(s) does this lesson plan address? Also, how do you determine the students' grades? In other words, I see peer assessment as an informal assessment, but where is the formal/summative assessment that determines their grade? These are just questions that emerged for me as I read through it.
ReplyDeleteDr. Domine,
ReplyDeleteMy lesson plan was created and altered for grade 9, I must have forgot to mention that! The students' grades will come from the final product which is a storyboard that they create on their own. The storyboard will be created based on what the students learned in class as a group. Also, the grade will come from how well they assessed their peers so that I, as the teacher, know they can not only create the storyboard and understand imagery but understand how to make their final work better and more accurate.