Smore
Smore is a website that allows you to create a flyer. In this example, I created as if i had a first grade classroom. The flyer is aimed towards the students and the parents of the students to view at home before the school year begins. The flyer starts off by giving an introduction about me, and the way in which I want to teach my classroom this year. It talks about my beliefs as an educator, and opens up the option of meeting with parents if they have any concerns. The next part of the flyer lists the topics I will cover in class throughout the school year. It then provides a link to my E-Portfolio, and a link to my Chatterpix, which welcomes my first grade class. Through this website, students can make their own flyers for future assignments, or I can use Smore to give announcements to my class in an engaging way. Smore allows students to be creative, and is a unique way to present information.
Computational Thinking Lesson Plan
For my computational thinking lesson plan, I worked with a colleague to come up with a way in which students could use algorithms to be creative and learn a concept. The standard we chose was counting money. The lesson plan first included a presentation which introduced the students to the values of coins and how to add them. The main activity of the lesson was the Bee Bot activity, in which we created a game board and questions on a powerpoint to go along with the game. The aim of the activity was for students to get with a partner, and race to find the correct answer to the sum of coins shown on the powerpoint. This computational thinking lesson plan focused on algorithms because students had to program the Bee Bot to move to the correct answer on the board. This activity was engaging to the students as it was a unique way of learning material. The game held educational value as it incorporated addition as well as algorithms.
Board Game
I worked with a colleague to create a lesson plan about preventing cyberbullying. For the main activity, we created a board game in which students had to race around the board and make it to the finish by answering questions provided to them on the cards. I incorporated QR codes into this board game as it was an efficient way for students to find the answer to the question and find out how many points they received. This game has education value as it is engaging and relates to the standard of the lesson plan. The students used the QR codes, which was a way to enhance their knowledge of technology, so they can use QR codes in the future.
PBL Lesson Plan
For the PBL lesson plan, I worked with a colleague to create a lesson plan which would require students to do their own research and come up with a solution to a problem and present it to the class. The first part of the lesson focused on making the students familiar with severe weather conditions by having them talk with a partner and watch a presentation. For the next 3 days, the students participated in different activities. On the first day, the students were assigned a severe weather condition and had to research about it. On the second day, the students took a field trip to the local weather channel, and were given the opportunity to ask the meteorologist questions. On the final day, the students created a piktochart to put together all of the information they had gathered. Then, the students presented to the rest of the class how to stay safe in a particular weather condition. Throughout this lesson, the students practiced research skills as well as communication skills between peers. There was also a sense of creativity involved as they had to be creative when designing the piktochart.