Lesson+Plan+Library

=Lesson Plan Library =



= =  For those of you out there in the education world who've happened upon my wiki in search of lesson plans or planning ideas, please note that the resources I'll be showcasing will be geared primarily toward the lower end of the elementary school spectrum. However, with some simple modifications, you may find that these ideas will tailor to your students quite perfectly! In any case, happy planning!

Day One: Getting to Know You with Stories

Day Two: Practicing Our Upper and Lowercase Letters and their Sounds This lesson activity includes the use of an interactive power point "Splash Page".

Day Three: The -at, -am, and -ot Word Families This lesson activity builds off of the word families our students' teacher Mrs. Lawson shared that the class has been working on. Included in our activity is a colorful and engaging power point game, as well as a web link to an extension activity from [|www.readwritethink.org].

Day Four: -at Masters! Here we decided to scale back, recognizing that our students' needed even more repetition than we had previously thought! This lesson presents some focused practice on the -at family through what ended up being a guitar-accompanied sing-along song -- way to run with the teachable moment, Mrs. Lawson! Note: During our lesson delivery, we decided to forgo the play dough activity in respect for the children's engagement in singing, so we intend to return to play dough next week!

Day Five: -at Practice Makes Perfect! After coming across the text //Hands-on Word Family Activities for Young Readers// by Roberta Seckler Brown & Susan Carey, we found ourselves with a totally renewed and refreshed outlook on how to present word families to our students! This lesson incorporates an -at word blending strip to make reading interactive and fun. There is also a cute little -at word story, as well as the play dough fun from last week. *This was actually our sixth lesson presented to Mrs, Lawson's students. The previous week, Amanda & I presented a whole group lesson about rhyming words to both the high & low functioning students of the class. This lesson was written by our EEX 4763 Tech Club classmates, Nichol Byrnes and Patricia Goldman. To view this lesson, just click [|here] 

Day Seven: A New Word Family -in Based on our observations that the class was finally getting the hang of word families, we decided to move on and introduce a new one: the -in family! At the same time, Mrs. Lawson has just introduced the short i vowel sound, so this lesson "piggy backs" on that concept to an extent. At the end, we get to color p//in//wheels, too! Come see the fun!

Day Eight: Making Predictions To tie in some of the fun our students were having with interactive read-alouds, Mrs. Lawson suggested we have a try at working on predictions with them. Here you'll find a lesson that incorporates a really adorable children's book called __The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear__ by Don Wood. We also reinforced the students' learning through use of a power point and a super duper exciting prediction game from www.readwrtethink.org.

Day Nine: Getting All Our Cookies in a Row Working again in an interactive read-aloud format, we wrapped up our preservice teaching experience with the children by teaching a fun lesson about sequencing in stories. Using Laura Numeroff's __If You Give a Mouse a Cookie__, a funky little sing-a-long, some sequencing cards, and even a nice round of coloring and writing practice, we tied together some of the best things the kids have been learning with us this semester.

=Technology-Adapted = =Lessons =

 In order to make artwork more accessible, students may choose to use paint brushes, finger paints, colored pencils, markers, crayons, or even be allowed to utilize paint program on classroom or computer lab pc. In addition, once students have completed their artwork(s), the teacher (or a student selected to be classroom technology assistant) can scan the images into windows movie maker or power point. Students can then work to make a digital slide show presentation of their art work. As a class, they may discuss what they "see" in the abstract art of each picture.  After students have had plenty of practice singing the “Silent E Song,” allow them to record their singing by making a Podcast which can then be made available in the classroom listening center for students to hear for additional “Silent E” practice.

In order to connect language arts and math, as well as deepen student understandings about the concept of counting and identifying the numerals from one to one hundred one, students may write a short letter to their e-pen pal via []. They may share their favorite part of the book read aloud in class, something they learned about rhyming words, counting, the difference between freight and passenger trains, their counting and number recognition skills, etc.

Increase student motivation for skip counting even more by allowing the students to create their own skip-counting music video! Have them practice singing and dancing to both versions of the Speckled Frog song. Then, record their performance using a digital video camera – or allow the classroom technology assistant to handle this job. The video can be posted on YouTube, the classroom website, or even a wikispace where students can revisit their song for practice and sharing with friends and family!

Students could engage in an online efieldtrip or National Geographic-style Xpedition to encounter culturally diverse children dancing to the rhythms and beats of traditional music. This could actually be used to help them anticipate this lesson and build some understandings about the activity in which they are about to participate.

As an enhancement to this set of lessons about the Moon, students may be allowed to test their knowledge by playing the “Quiz Your Noodle: The Moon” game at [] as part of a computer or science center. They may also be interested in examining the “Moon Exploration” photographs available online at [] and taking the time to journal, or even Tweet about what they learned and saw.

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Working in pairs, allow children to use digital cameras to illustrate (through photographs) and elaborate on their stapless book that they’ve created about their ‘secret lives’ outside of school. They may include these photographs and such in their section of the classroom blog, as well. In order to do so, however, instruct children that each picture must be accompanied by a caption or short paragraph description so the blog-readers understand why they chose it!

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">After presenting this lesson, divide the class into groups of two to three students. Explain to each group that they will use the Kidspiration application to do the following activity. Have them use their computer at the classroom computer center and open the “Using the Senses” template from the Kidspiration application under the Science button. In this activity, each group will find different pictures from the symbol library that we use our senses to observe. Then, the students will drag the pictures to the appropriate sense box. Each group will need to find a minimum of 3 pictures for each sense. When the activity is completed, each group will print out a copy of the activity for each of the students in the group and one to be handed in to the teacher.Students may then present their sense pictures to the class after they have been evaluated for accuracy.

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Although this lesson was originally written for upper-level students (around high school age), I liked it’s general message and content. A wonderful way to extend its topic with technology would be to allow the students to video tape their role playing scenarios, then post those along with summaries of what they’ve learned about making friends on a class wiki. This way, others may read their work, and learn the skills needed to select good friends and become good friends themselves.

<span style="color: #800080; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">As a way to accomplish the multimedia presentation segment of the Instructional Tools Assignment, I actually created a PowerPoint activity which enhances and extends this lesson plan. Click on the link to check it out!