The first phase of the Blog reflection is due prior to any students beginning their teaching experience (week 6 of a typical semester).
- Every student or teaching group must create one entry for each of the following items.
- Include with each entry 2 digital artifacts that demonstrate what you have created, what you were thinking, or where you got your information pertaining to each section.
Assessing Prior Knowledge:
If you were teaching this with the targeted grade level students
How would prior experience have been assessed?
I would ask the students what information they knew about any of the 6 characters being highlighted in the Revolutionary War unit. A TRUE/FALSE pre-assessment will allow for learners to get an idea for what types of facts will be included on their created artifact.
What would be the implications for instructional planning and assessment based on the activities you chose to do for assessing prior knowledge?
In our lesson, the pre-assessment is used as a knowledge activator. Hopefully it will engage student’s brains in a way that prepares them for the activities in a way that piques their curiosity. The pre-assessment may sway what information students find important in their individual research, but is not guaranteed to do so.
Plans Instruction:
Discuss how your goals, objectives, and outcomes are
Clearly stated
Through the creation and use of web-quests, learners will be equipped to create an informational pamphlet meeting rubric requirements.
Appropriate for students
As the final project in a unit on the Revolutionary War, these objectives are fairly broad in scope. This allows students to show what they have learned in a way unique to them, as well as giving them the opportunity to further investigate a character in the Revolutionary War and discover specific events or contributions that each character made which may not have been included in the curriculum.
Aligned to state standards
The web quests (guided and other), pre-assessment, and rubrics were created using and assessing learned information from the state standards.
Designing Instruction:
Discuss how your instructional design
Is contextually and logically organized
Students will first gain skills necessary to navigate a web page and harvest information, and then put those skills to the test in pursuing a webquest. After the required information has been gathered, students will create an artifact using publisher to summarize their information in an engaging format.
Uses varied instructional methods that meet individual student needs and target higher order thinking skills
When designing the lesson plan, considerations were made for English Language Learners through the development of web-quest pages. The gifted students’ needs were taken into account through the extension of adding a time line for the life of the chosen character to the final artifact. At risk students were considered by offering extended instruction after school for guided practice in the use of the internet as well as how to gather information using the criteria sheet for the assignment. The use of voice activated technology was considered for learners who had mobility issues.
Integrates technology from a constructivist perspective
Students use the experiences at each stage of this lesson to construct their knowledge. After gaining the skills necessary to complete a webquest, they are allowed to practice those skills in a way unique to each student, and then show what they have learned in an equally unique way through the use of Publisher. By having a variety of experiences, student learning is encouraged.
Planning Assessment:
How will your assessment tools demonstrate
The performance of linked goals and/or objectives
The objectives for this assignment were to use the internet to obtain information of Revolutionary War characters and to create a pamphlet describing that character using Microsoft Publisher.
Student engagement in higher order thinking
Two of the six characters highlighting this assignment had specific web-quest worksheets to complete. Some of the questions allowed for learners to draw conclusions based upon information that they read from the web pages. The other four character web-quests had a rubric assessment attached where students where the learner was given scored performance guides when compiling information toward the completion of their informative pamphlet.
Meeting individual student needs
The differentiation in assessment allows for students to choose a product that is at their level. If they need a challenge, it is available. If they need more structure, it is there too. Students are given choice from the start about which character they choose, allowing them to select one that they may feel comfortable with or are curious about. Creating a pamphlet on that character allows students to show what they know or have learned.
This document is the pre-assessment for lesson.
This document helped us to create the web-quests.
Artifact 2: Web Quest Criteria
