In teaching it is often helpful to
see how another teacher has put together a lesson our outlined a unit. I know that by working with my team, the
lessons and learning that takes place is greater than if I were trying to do
everything on my own. With that in mind,
I would like to share with you a unit that incorporates social networking and
the benefits that can be achieved by using this often controversial, but
academically worthwhile technology.
Unit goals/objectives and resources
My unit
is designed for a high school world history class, and focuses on World War
1. The basic overview of the unit is to
allow the teacher to have immediate feedback of the student’s present level of
understanding and for them to work together to make more informed
decisions. To achieve this, the students
will be posting a daily blog, answering and responding to discussion questions
and participating in a class debate, all of which will be done online. Students will also be expected to track their
learning through the use of I can statements that are related to the day’s
academic goals. This will be accomplished
through my class website which is hosted by Haiku learning. All of the activities I will be discussing
are possible on third party platforms that are available to use for free, which
means that if you want to use this idea, it is possible even without the Haiku
platform. This unit will target two
Common Core standards WHST.9-10.6 and RH.9-10.2. WHST.9-10.6 states that
students will, “Use technology, including the internet, to produce, publish,
and update individual or shared writing products, while RH.9-10.2 asks
students, “Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary
source; provide and accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over
the course of the text.” The unit will
also be based around my districts history standards; these can easily be
changed/adapted to fit your districts standards.
I have
included the Daily
Learning sheet for this lesson. On
it you will see the daily lesson as well as the learning target for each
student. This also provides the student
with a series of I can statements in which they are expected to track their
learning throughout the unit. I have
also included each of the blog
post topics the students are expected to answer and the warmup/discussion
questions the students will work on each day. Assessment for this unit will be based off
their answers to their blog and discussion questions as well as their
participation in the two debates.
Rubrics for blog posts and discussion questions are located at the
bottom of those documents, while the rubric for the first debate is on the debate
assignment guidelines. The second
debate is different and will be completed using an audio recording program
called audacity. These files will then
be uploaded to the class website and the debate will take place digitally. The guidelines and rubric for debate
#2 are linked also.
Project Description/Overview
This
unit is designed to teach the students the causes and history of the First
World War. Throughout the unit the
students will be using different types of social media to enhance and think
critically about their learning. The
first day of the unit the students are creating a web page based on a character
that they are assigned from one of the major countries that participated in the
war. This persona will be used
throughout the lesson to complete the student’s blog entries. Days two through four will provide the
students with background information for their first debate. This debate will have the students debating
the true cause of the war based on the four main causes. Days seven and eight again provide the
students with background information on the impact of the war on the people of
the main countries. This leads the
students into the second debate which covers who is really responsible for the
start of the war. Finally, the last two
days of the unit are used for the students to complete their understanding of
the war and then to formulate their answer to the overreaching learning target
for the unit, understand how WW1 defined/changed the world.
Use of Social Media
Throughout
the lesson the students will be writing a daily blog that covers issues that
were covered in class. The day before
the test I will randomly assign a student a fellow students blog to peer assess
using the rubric I will also use to assess them with. Three times throughout this unit the students
will also be having an online discussion.
The goal of both of these activities is for the students to be able to
gather a different perspective on the war and teach other. On the days of the debate prep, days four and
eight, the students will be using google docs to create their platform for the
debate. This will allow the students to
all work on the same document throughout the period and then continue to work
and edit their assignment at home. As
you will be able to see from the screen shots of the web page I created for
this assignment, the students will be posting their debate opening statements
to the website. The students will then
listen in class to those students that blamed their own country, based off of
their character that was assigned the first day. We will follow the debate format from the
first assignment, but this one will be done entirely online, and will not
include the conclusion. Without the use
of blogs, discussion boards and online digital resources this unit would be
impossible to accomplish. The ability
for students to interact and teach each other is what makes this unit a dynamic
and fluid learning experience for the students.
No comments:
Post a Comment