Lesson Plan for Henrico 21 Awards
Lesson Title: Introducing The One and only Ivan
Target Grade/Subject: Language Arts 6
Length: 90 minutes
Summary: Students participated in a global read aloud with the book The One and Only Ivan, by Christina Applegate. Students write a prediction about what they believe the book will be about. The teacher reads the first four chapters of the book to students. The teacher then had students conduct basic research about gorillas in order to obtain some background information.
Essential questions: What are some strategies you can use when beginning a new book?
Lesson Development:
Process/Tasks/Assessment: (Describe what the teacher and students are doing during this lesson. Include details about particular tasks and essential resources/tools. Include a description of the artifact that you will collect as evidence of content/skill mastery and state how you will communicate your assessment expectations to the students.)
Preparation: The teacher visited the website globalreadaloud.wikispaces.com and entered her class location on the map. The teacher also joined the Edmodo group for the project.
Lesson 1: The teacher described the Global Read Aloud project and introduced the book The One and Only Ivan to students through a book trailer (10 minutes).
Students used wallwisher.com to respond to the question: “Can you predict what will happen in the book?” (15 minutes) Students are reminded that the post will be part of their evaluation and that proper grammar is expected. Only first names may be used.
Artifact: http://wallwisher.com/wall/coleyivan
The teacher then reads aloud the first four chapters to students. They are fairly short. (15 minutes)
In order to gain some background information about the book, students are directed to conduct some basic research about gorillas. They utilize a discussion forum in SchoolSpace to post questions that they would like answered. The teacher gives an example of a bad question “What color are gorillas?” and gives an example of a good question, “How many gorillas are left in the wild?” Each student was required to submit at least one question related to gorillas. (10 minutes)
The teacher pulls out one question and holds a discussion about what keywords would most likely yield the best results about the topic. The teacher directs students to find two other people with similar questions and creates groups based on the questions. Teacher assists with grouping.
Students are asked to find the answer to their question, evaluate and list the source, and post it on a slide in Google Docs.
Students use RADCAB (taught in a previous lesson) to evaluate websites for validity.
Students place information in a collaborative Google Doc Presentation about gorillas. Each student was assigned one slide in the presentation that is shared with the entire class. They were asked to post their question, answer, and source on the slide. The teacher then shows the presentation to the class, discussing the questions and validity of sources. Students utilize the chat feature in Google Docs presentation as the teacher reviews the presentation (45 minutes).
For homework, students are asked to respond to the following questions:
1. When you started searching for your topic, how did you select your sources?
2. What keywords provided the most success?
3. What was a benefit of Google Docs presentation? What was a limitation?
TIP Chart Assessment:
(Using the TIP Chart, identify which level (e.g. entry, developing, approaching, ideal/target) your lesson falls in for each of the categories below and write a brief statement to describe what the students are doing as it relates to the indicators on the TIP chart.)
Categories:
Research and Information Fluency:
6-Target: Students construct their own questions to guide research. They are assembling information in a collaborative presentation from an appropriate source. Students evaluate websites as they seek to answer specific questions.
Communication and Collaboration:
4-Approaching: This lesson has students working in groups based upon the types of questions they developed. They are utilizing digital tools for collaboration to conduct basic research.
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving:
3- Developing: Students are responding to higher level questions throughout the lesson. They have to use a problem solving method in order to answer their own research question and utilize a variety of digital tools to solve the class problems.
Creativity and Innovation:
3- Developing: Students are creating specific products in this lesson. They create a post on Wallwisher to make a prediction. They are creating questions to guide research in a discussion forum. They also create a slide on Google Docs presentation. The subject material weaves across disciplines.