Reflection Sheet
1. How did you implement your cyber lesson? (small group, whole group, posted on the internet to be done at home, individually, as a learning center etc…)
I implemented my cyber lesson to a small group of four students in grades five and six. Since I am not currently teaching I implemented the cyber lesson in my home with a group of my daughter’s friends. This cyber lesson was developed as an extension of a bigger unit on Brazil that is part of the sixth grade social studies curriculum at my daughter’s school. This cyber lesson was designed to be completed individually or with a partner. The way the cyber lesson is designed it requires each student to have access to a computer and the Internet so it may not be appropriate to require this for homework due to the fact that not all families have computers or Internet access.
2. How did your students respond to the project?
The students loved the lesson. They said they wished they had more opportunities to learn through cyber lessons because they could move at their own pace and didn’t have to try to keep up with the teacher. They liked that the cyber lesson had links to Internet sites where they could learn more about the Amazon rainforest and the Amazon rainforest tribes. These sites connected them to real world information and the sites were savvy enough to interest 10-12 year old students.
3. Strengths?
The strengths of this cyber lesson lay in the fact that by the 5th and 6th grade students have quite strong background knowledge of a rainforest. It was easy to activate the students’ background knowledge in preparation for this cyber lesson. The most important element of this cyber lesson is that it built on their background knowledge and pushed them to contemplate new information on the Amazon rainforest and its people. In order for this cyber lesson to be successful it needed to introduce new information that these students have not seen before and to ask them to do new things with this information.
4. Weaknesses?
A weakness of this cyber lesson was in the implementation. Because this was done in my home it was difficult to foster the type of academic atmosphere, teacher modeling, and feedback needed in order to insure quality work.
5. How would you modify the way in which you implemented the project to make it more successful?
I would implement the cyber lesson to a whole class so that they could share and work on the cyber lesson with a wider group of peers. In this way the students can move from individual work to partner work to small group and large group discussions. A larger group of peers would foster better discussions and would have a positive affect on reflections.
6. Recommendations?
I would recommend having a cyber lesson reading response journal prepared for each student ahead of time. The RRJ packet is included in my artifacts file. The students found RRJ helped them to keep their materials organized. This cyber lesson can be used as part of a larger unit or the cyber lesson is quite capable of standing alone as a unit of study on the Amazon rainforest and its people. I would allow a good 2 weeks to satisfactorily implement this cyber lesson.