EDLD+5364+Action+plan+answers+redux+(week+3+assignment)

1. What grade level and content area(s) will you address to meet the unique needs of 30 students? Since we have three people with elementary grade experience, one currently teaching middle school and I teach high school, we all agreed to meet in the middle and work on a sixth grade level lesson. Math will be the subject, since we all have some familiarity with that. 2. What will the learning activities/units look like? Hands on activities will be stressed in the lesson with visual and aural techniques used in the introduction. For example, one of the openings to the lesson that I suggested was to have the students attempt to estimate how much wrapping paper it would take to wrap a box. This starts as a visual and aural lesson then moves to hands on as they cut paper, use tape and attempt to wrap the box with their paper estimate. The objective is for them to learn about area and perimeter. 3. How will you model examples for the teacher? At this point, we would go to the teacher’s classroom and model the lesson. If that was not possible, we would conduct this inservice session via video link- probably some sort of YouTube video. The box wrapping would be in the classroom at a lab table. The camera would then have to follow students around as they estimate and measure various rooms and parts of the school grounds. 4. What 21st Century trends will you include in the program? TeacherTube is probably the best place to post this lesson. Students could be recording their data on iPads or later work it into a powerpoint presentation. I would also like for them to be able to use laser measuring devices like builders and realtors use to measure room sizes. I think using power point, paint or photoshop, indesign will help students draw plans when creating their school. My suggestion is that a paint program would probably be best. Photoshop and InDesign have very high learning curves. Blogging or at least emailing to ask experts is another trend to implement. Using a project approach for cooperative learning will also be used. Also, integrating Excel and creating formulas to perform calculations is an important skill students will gain experience with. We could possibly use on Internet based spreadsheet tool mentioned in the resource section in our textbooks. Allowing students to use Inspiration (graphic organizer), speech to text, or whatever works best for them to take notes will be approved and supported. 5. How will you meet individual differences? Since we created a lesson for 6th grade math students with a variety of learning skills we will place the students in groups in order to place them with students that might be able to assist in collecting the needed information. The box wrapping “opener” will work well for the blind student. At the end of the exercise, students will be designing a school of their own using data they have taken of their real school as a guide. Analysis, synthesis will be required and the GT kids should be all over this. Some of the other ideas that the group brainstormed on our Google doc were: 5. How will you assess the effectiveness of the learning activities? How will you know when the teacher has an understanding of how to teach with technology to benefit student learning? Again, through brainstorming as a group, we came up with- Students will present a school that the group has designed. The school may be presented through a PowerPoint, scale model, a blue print drawing, and any other media that students present for approval to the teacher. Students will show mastery of concept through correct calculations of the area and perimeter of their rooms in the school. Allowing students to select the media of their choice to demonstrate their learning will give a fair assessment of the learning activities. Although not all students will master the concepts of area and perimeter upon completion of the notes, by the end of the group work they will be exposed to how others solved the problems and thus will be able to use that information and group support to experience success. We may even take some of the students who didn’t quite get it back to the box wrapping exercise for reteaching and reinforcement of the concepts.
 * We will provide opportunities for students to see real world application of uses for area and perimeter.
 * Students will design a school of their own in cooperative groups finding the area and perimeter of rooms and school as a whole.
 * Students will find area and perimeter of rooms in their school.
 * Students will use on line software to reinforce the area and perimeter concepts.
 * Students will use excel and formulas to find area and perimeter.
 * Students who need help due to reading difficulties or lower reading levels will use Kurzweil program.
 * Students may blog or ask questions of architects.
 * Student will take notes or use graphic organizers to record formulas