Cyber Lesson Reflection
1. Provide Background on the development of the cyber lesson. What grade level and curriculum did you develop it for?
This lesson was developed to be a part of a third grade science unit on Conservation. This unit is required by my district to be taught within my curriculum, however I felt that I could add to it by developing this cyber lesson to expand up the ideas that were already presented within the lessons that I was required to teach by my district.
I created the cyber lesson with the intent to teach the children more about where garbage goes, what landfills are, what recycling is, why we recycle, and what are some of the ways that we can work together in our communities to help save our planet. Additionally I wanted them to learn how and why Earth Day was created. To do this I chose a book that elaborated upon all these ideas, and touched upon how other countries helped to conserve the Earth’s natural resources. In the end I hoped that the students would have an understanding and be able to explain about all the listed items above.
Throughout the lesson we talked about different ways we could work together to save our planet, and we also researched how Earth Day came to be. The children discussed and learned how to reduce items, how to reuse items, and how to make every day in our world an Earth Day.
2. How did you implement the lesson? (small group, whole group, etc.)
This lesson began as a whole group lesson that was directed by me. In this lesson we talked about a story aloud, and the children responded to questions that were asked by me independently in their science notebooks. They then shared their responses with the whole group. We had many in depth discussions based upon what the children shared from their notebooks. When we were done with reading our story aloud, we moved to partner work where the children created posters that depicted how to make everyday on our planet an Earth Day. Finally the children moved to small group work where they worked together to developed ways to reuse commonly thrown out items.
3. How did your students respond to the project?
The children really enjoyed the project, and I think it is because it is a rare experience for them to get to complete a project such as this one on the computer. I do a lot of computer work with them, but never to this extent. They almost never get to participate in an entire lesson where they are connecting to websites, and additionally one that last this long on the computer. They got so excited to be able to change the slides and to click on websites and have different things come up onto the screens. They really were very enthusiastic about this assignment, and seemed to love what they were participating in.
4. Strengths?
I think that the strengths of this lesson where that it was done on the computer so it was more hands on and visual for the children. It was more engaging and visually appealing to the children, and therefore because of their genuine enjoyment of the lesson, they walked away gaining new knowledge of a subject. I could see that they had a new knowledge of the subject within their science journals. The answers that my students developed to some of the questions that I was asking them to respond to were amazing. They were so well supported and the kids were using new vocabulary and evidence from the text to support their answers. It was such a great feeling to see the kids using what they were learning and to visually see that they were learning!!!
5. Weaknesses?
One weakness that was very apparent in my lesson was that it could not move from PC computer to a Mac computer without everything getting all messed up, and it took a lot of time to figure out how to adjust this. Pictures were moving all over the place, and websites weren’t working. The first day that I had intended to begin the lesson with the chdilren, I was not able to because when I brought it up on the computer screen, everything was all over the place, and I thought that I had done something, or somehow I had ruined the lesson when I saved it onto my Jump drive. Eventually I ended up having to move to a colleagues room who had a PC Computer in order to make the lesson work properly, and the children were able to adjust to it easily.
Also I did notice that some of the websites that I picked to further enhance the learning on my lesson where a little higher reading level than that of some of my students, and so we ended up having to break the passages down more than I had originally intended to.
6. In what ways do you think your cyber lesson supported student learning?
The cyber lesson supported student learning in a few ways. One way that it supported student learning was that it drew upon their background knowledge by having them complete an Anticipation Guide prior to beginning the lesson, additionally the children had to make predictions throughout the lesson and they had to support the predictions with evidence and support
Another way that student learning was supported was through the use of questioning. Every few pages I stopped and asked the children questions, where they had to respond with answers that we were well supported, and again provided evidence from the text. We shared many answers each time and discussed the responses. Often the children went back to their responses and elaborated on them after we had the chance to discuss them.
When the lesson was complete the learning was again supported because the children were asked to reflect upon everything that they learned by creating a poster that showed how everyday could be an Earth Day. The posters were shared, and discussed. Once all posters were shared the children were given the opportunity to go back and add more details to them if they wished.
7. How would you modify the way in which you implemented the project to make it more successful?
Due to a enormous building project that my school is undergoing at the current moment I didn’t have access to a computer lab that could house all of my students at once for me to teach this lesson, so I instead taught it with the use of a Smart Board, where it was a more interactive lesson. The children came up to the board and changed the slides and clicked on the websites as much as possible, however not every child had the chance to do so, if I could do this lesson again I would love to do it in a computer lab, where every child had the chance to have their own computer to access the websites and to connect more to the lesson.
Also if I were to complete this lesson again I would like to attach all the paper documents such as the Anticipation Guide to the computer so the children could complete it electronically rather than on paper. I think that would connect it more to the cyber lesson concept.
8. Recommendations?
My recommendations are similar to my modifications in that I would use a computer lab to complete this rather than the Smart Board and I would make all the paper materials electronic. By doing this it makes the lesson so much more of a cyber lesson experience.