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Kinga Decsy
1. How did you implement your cyberlesson? (small group, whole group, posted on the Internet to be done at home, individually, as a learning center etc.)
I implemented my cyberlesson at home, since I am not currently teaching. I designed it specifically as an individual extension activity for my daughter to a unit that her first grade class was learning about. Her class was studying about children around the world and their similarities and differences. The teacher touched on differences in skin color, but did not go into depth in this area. My daughter brought home a book one night in early October entitled, The Colors of Us, and was extremely excited about reading it to me. They had done an activity in class, which involved mixing paints to match their skin tone. The students then painted a likeness of themselves with their accurate skin color. Since she was so excited about this new learning, I decided to gear my cyberlesson around the topic of skin color.
2. How did your students respond to the project?
Sierra loved the cyberlesson. She was very enthusiastic about learning more about different skin colors and enjoyed doing the activities on the computer. She read both The Colors of Us and All the Colors We Are and was able to compare and contrast the two books without any difficulty. She has used Venn Diagrams in both Kindergarten and now in first grade as well, so the concept was familiar to her. Sierra loves to write and enjoyed recording her newfound knowledge. Also, since she has been graphing various forms of information in math class in school, creating the bar graph of the skin color differences at a family birthday party was a good review activity for her.
3. Strengths?
I think that the main strength of this cyberlesson is that it was used as an extension activity to a unit that was already presented in school. Sierra’s background knowledge of the topic of differences in skin color was already activated at school, and she was able to apply what she already knew in completing the activities in the cyberlesson, as well as build onto that knowledge base.
4. Weaknesses?
A weakness in the cyberlesson is the choice of topic. It was incredibly difficult to find any scientific resources online regarding differences in skin color that was geared to children of her age. The majority of the websites geared towards children were still way above her reading and comprehension level and were more appropriate for a fourth or fifth grader instead. I found that the resources either weren’t appropriate to children her age, whether it be the vocabulary or the way in which it was presented, or websites just didn’t exist for children her age.
This was a huge disappointment and a source of frustration for me in creating this cyberlesson.
Another weakness that I found was in my own lack of experience teaching first grade. I taught fifth grade in the past and have experience in both fourth and sixth, but none at the first grade level. My only experience with a first grader is my own daughter, Sierra. At the first grade level, students’ reading and writing abilities are incredibly varied, and Sierra happens to be an above average reader and writer. I know that since my only experience with a first grade reader and writer is with her, my development of this cyberlesson was somewhat skewed. I created it specifically for her, knowing what she was able to do, therefore, the lesson may not transfer very easily without modification into a regular first grade classroom. It would however, be a good challenge activity for higher level readers in first grade.
5. How would you modify the way in which you implemented the project to make it more successful?
In order to make the project more successful, I modified it by recording my voice reading the story, therefore, students who are unable to read the book on their own can listen to it being read. Students like Sierra who could read the book, could follow along in the book, while the story was read aloud to them or even read it on their own. Another possible modification could be to include a link to the text of the story, if it was available online, (which I did not find), or to even include a typed text of the story on a slide within the actual cyberlesson.
After having Sierra complete the cyberlesson, I realized that students would be more successful in completing the Story Map, if they were only responsible for mapping the locations that Lena and her mother visited in their story, and not both the locations and the names of family and friends that they met along the way. An idea that occurred to me after implementing the cyberlesson was to include a second, matching activity, along with the Story Map, which asks students to match the skin color object photographs in the beginning of the cyberlesson, with the names of each of the family members and friends that Lena and her mother meet along the way during their walk around town. This would give students a better visual memory of the story and help them to remember key events when combined with the modified Story Map.
6. Recommendations?
My recommendations for implementing this cyberlesson include:
*Having the two books, The Colors of Us and All the Colors We Are available to students to read along. Ideally, having the story read aloud online would be the best for students, especially since not all computers in a school are able to pick up the sound recording that I have attached to the PowerPoint cyberlesson.
*Having a parent helper or an older childs’ help available to provide support while the student is involved with the cyberlesson is another recommendation. Perhaps even having pairs of students work together along with a cross-age tutor or parent helper.
*I had the chance to observe reading groups and the reading/writing abilities of first graders when I helped out in my daughter’s classroom a few weeks ago, and therefore, another suggestion would be to possibly consider using this lesson at the very end of first grade or even into second grade, so that the students’ reading levels are given a chance to level out a bit more. There is just too much of a discrepancy in November of first grade in the reading/writing levels of the students.
*Another idea is to use this as a challenge activity for the higher readers in a first grade classroom.
*A continuous search of websites geared towards students of this age and grade would also be recommended, in order to be able to incorporate more online links into the cyberlesson. The lack of appropriate websites containing information that first graders would be able to comprehend was a very disappointing revelation in creating this cyberlesson.