Lesson Plan Project - Verb to be

The final project of Design and Use of Instructional Technolgy was the creation of a lesson plan which included technology-based activities. I will share with you the whole project, so you can have a global idea of what were the objectives and goals of this project.

INTRODUCTION

For this project the population chosen was students from fourth grade of elementary school; who are, on average, 10 years old. Their English level is very basic, they have a low beginner knowledge level on the language. The class that is supposed to be taught is a two-lesson class, which means that is for 80 minutes.

The topic I chose for this lesson is verb to be in simple present form. It will be taught the positive and negative, questions, and short answer forms of this grammar structure. This lesson will be mostly based on technology, but the “normal” methodology of board and markers will also be used to give the explanation.

The lesson plan is divided into stages that are: review on previous knowledge, warm-up, introduction, explanation, practice, production, and review and closure. In every one of those stages, there will be one activity with its objectives, contents, materials, timing, and evaluation.

The technology used in this lesson plan is the best as possible, according to what I personally learned from the course of Design and Use of Educational Technology and the implementations done throughout the quarter. The activities are not completely based on technology because I think there must be a balance between technology and common resources.

TYPES OF INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY CHOSEN

For this lesson plan, I decided to get some support from different technological resources, this is the list of those websites used to plan and carry out this lesson:

·         Busyteacher.org: this website is from my show & tell post, here I found job vocabulary flashcards for the review of previous knowledge. (Virador) (BusyTeacher, n.d.)

·         Powtoon: this website is for making presentations and videos. I used it for making an introductory video to the topic. Then, that video I created, I uploaded it to YouTube. (Powtoon, n.d.) (YouTube, n.d.). These are the links to the videos:

http://www.powtoon.com/show/bc1x1lKbX9C/verb-to-be-examples-beginner-level/#/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08G6GA_GXH8

·         Crossword Puzzle Maker – The Teachers’ Corner: this website is for designing word puzzles (The teachers corner, n.d.)

·         Storybird: it is for designing digital books and stories. (Storybird, n.d.)

·         Rubistar: this is a great tool for creating rubrics for assessing and evaluating learning. (Rubistar, n.d.)

ACTIVITIES

MATERIALS

CONCLUSIONS

In this final project from the course Design and Use of Educational Technology, the contents learned through the quarter were put in practice in a meaningful way, planning a lesson with different technological resources and websites that were studied in class. Even though technology facilitates a lot of things, having a lot of options was really difficult because I had to choose just some of the websites because there is not enough time to apply all in just one lesson plan, even when most of them were great. I think that a lesson should not be fully based on technology, students still need other methodologies were notebooks and pens are used. Also, the teacher can´t rely completely on websites because what would happen if there is no internet access that day, or if there a power cut that day.

According to an article in Education.com portal, it is easier to keep students reviewing topics on their smartphones, tablets, or laptops by including apps or websites where they learn through games. The students spend more time on task if they have to use technology to study or to make homework. The younger generations are always willing to incorporate technologic resources in their daily life routine, and if education goes hand in hand with it, then it will be a total success. Also, having the help of technology in class can assure equal opportunities for everyone to learn because almost every learning style is somehow included in these kind of modern tools. (Cleaver, 2014)

The benefits of using technology in class are uncountable, such as:

“It can keep students focused for longer periods of time (…), it makes students more excited to learn (…), it enables students to learn at their own pace (…), and it prepares students for the future (…)” (Huneycutt, 2013)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cleaver, S. (2014, September 15). Technology in the Classroom: Helpful or Harmful? Retrieved December 9, 2014, from Education.com: http://www.education.com/magazine/article/effective-technology-teaching-child/

Huneycutt, T. (2013, October 8). Technology in the classroom: The benefits of blended learning. Retrieved December 9, 2014, from National Math + Science Initiative: http://www.nms.org/Blog/TabId/58/PostId/188/technology-in-the-classroom-the-benefits-of-blended-learning.aspx

Powtoon. (n.d.). Verb to be examples - beginner level. Retrieved December 9, 2014, from Powtoon: http://www.powtoon.com/

Rubistar. (n.d.). Rubistar. Retrieved December 9, 2014, from http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=NewRubric&module=Rubistar

Storybird. (n.d.). Storybird. Retrieved December 9, 2014, from http://www.storybird.com/

The teachers corner. (n.d.). Crossword Puzzle Maker. Retrieved December 9, 2014, from The Teachers Corner: http://worksheets.theteacherscorner.net/make-your-own/crossword/

Virador, R. (n.d.). Jobs Flashcards. Retrieved December 9, 2014, from BusyTeacher: http://busyteacher.org/21006-jobs-flashcards.html

YouTube. (n.d.). Verb to be examples - beginner level. Retrieved December 9, 2014, from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08G6GA_GXH8

Web2 - 4 Languages Teachers

Professor Dagoberto shared with us this link, where teachers can find a lot of different tools to apply in the classroom.

It was a forum and we had to choose 3 of them and use them. The ones I chose were:

1. For All Rubrics https://www.forallrubrics.com/
2. Inkle Writer https://writer.inklestudios.com/
3. Flash Card Machine http://www.flashcardmachine.com/

I actually used only 2 of them because Inkle Writer was kind of difficult and boring to use, and the results were not as I expected, so I decided not to implement it. But the other 2 websites I did use them.

For All Rubrics
This website helps you create all kind of rubrics or checklists for several subjects or objectives. It also provides with sample rubrics that you can modify or use as a guide to create your own. Creating a good rubric can take too much time, that most time teacher DON´T have, and this tool minimizes that looong time.
I have done a rubric and a checklist with this tool to assess my student on Oral Presentations  wit a rubric and Writing Projects with a checklist.

Flash Card Flash

You can create sets of flashcards and then you can print them, take quiz on the contents of the flashcards.

You can share a public link to the flashcards where people can study them and then they can take a quiz about those flashcards.

http://www.flashcardmachine.com/machine/?read_only=3125213&p=a89e

This tool is very helpful when you teach a beginners group because they need to learn a lot of vocabulary but it can not be taught in the same way, so providing the students with flashcards is a great way to diversify the instruction method.

Examtime

On the forum "Show & Tell", Milagro shared a very useful website, which is Examtime. Here you can create c-maps or mind maps, create tests or quizes, create flashcards, create notes.

I have used the mind maps creator which allows you to set a background, and give ANY form you want to your c-map. I have worked with this mind map tool along this quarter for creating the homework c-maps from my Psychology course. Mila told me about it and it has been of a lot of help because it is easy to use it and it helps the people who are visual learners. I am one of that kind of learning style so colors, shapes, graphics, cmaps, and so on, are so helpful to learn better and easier.

These are the mind maps I´ve created with Examtime: (they are in sequence according as I have been making them). So you can notice the changes I´ve had. The more I use it, the more I am better at it.

https://www.examtime.com/es/p/1318589

https://www.examtime.com/es/p/1447973

https://www.examtime.com/es/p/1612193-Constructivism---Meaningful-Learning-mind_maps

https://www.examtime.com/es/p/1660767

https://www.examtime.com/es/p/1730232

The mind maps are a great tool for students to study. Sometimes they don´t know how to study for a very hard test, or they have a lot of contents and they have to summarize it so they can study and learn it correctly. There is when cmaps are one of the technological tools they can have access to because it is FREE and easy to use.

Powtoon

In this entry I´m going to write about this wonderful tool, Powtoon. It is awesome to create videos or presentations.

You can find like templates from which you can start making your own video/presentation, or you can start to do it from blank. If you are bored of using Prezi or Power Point, this is a great option to have some changes in your presentations.

Powtoon is great for making animated videos. If you are just starting to create your own videos for the classroom (introduce yourself, welcome from vacations, introduction to a topic) you can create them in this website and your students will totally love the product of this. The videos are of a high quality and you can upload them directly to Youtube (which is great nowadays). You can add backgrounds, transitions, animated cartoons, props, text with different effects, and more)

I implemented this tool with my brother (17 years old) and he found it easy to use after a little explanation. Then, he explored the website and created this video:
http://www.powtoon.com/show/dszGu2JFPxd/sebas-introduction/

Then, I had to create a lesson plan for two of my courses in the university and I used Powtoon to make an introductory video to the topic, which was Verb to be in simple present form.
This is my video:
http://www.powtoon.com/show/bc1x1lKbX9C/verb-to-be-examples-beginner-level/

Field Trip to Fundación Omar Dengo (FOD)

On October 28th (Week #8) we had a field trip to Fundación Omar Dengo in San José. This non-profit organization whose main objective is to develop people capacities, but they try to do it through innovative educational proposals, supported on the use of new technologies.
Their website address is: http://www.fod.ac.cr/

This foundation was created back in 1987, and since that moment they have been improving the education in Costa Rica through the use of technological resources and new different programs adapted to our public educational system.

I have been in two of their programs: Laboratorios de Informática Educativa, and Empresa Labor@. These two programs are available almost on every school and high school of Costa Rica, giving access to students to computers, internet access and technological resources to have a more complete education. Laboratorios de Informática Educativa are available on primary and secondary school. They first introduce students with the correct use of a computer, then they start teaching some tools like Micromundos (MM) or with the use of Internet.

Empresa Labor@ helps students with entrepreneurship abilities so in the future they know how to deal with issues related to the manage of a company. With Labor@, my classmates and I created a company that sold articles made from recycled materials. We had to work weekly on that 6-months project who had very good results because we had guidance from our teacher, a woman from FOD, and we also received feedback from other students who were in other Empresa Labor@ projects.