Lesson Plan #4/Observation

Lesson Plan:
I figured for today's lesson plan that I would actually just reuse the one I wrote last week for week three because I didn't get to use it and it's now closer to the Thanksgiving holidays I have printed out sheets of paper and have labeled each one with the appropriate Native American Tribe. Each student will pick whichever tribe they want and Google search the tribe and I want them to tell me something unique about the tribe they have chosen. We can look at the differences each student finds and maybe some tribes will have similarities as well. I have a list of cool Native American facts from Montana that I plan on sharing with them. Additionally I am going into the school early and am going to look for a short story to read them if the time allows. Michael suggested that would be a good strategy if they are being rowdy for some reason because they know when someone is reading to them to listen. I want to make this lesson plan very oriented toward Thanksgiving because its a holiday that traditionally holds a lot of history with it and it's important to recognize the history.

Observation:
We used Tressa's lesson plan today and took them to a website called Melody Street where it teaches them virtually about music and sounds relevant to music. Knowing how to play music or kids that play instruments generally have an easier time in school because music is challenging to learn. I thought that this lesson plan was interesting in that sense, what I noticed is the students who previously played an instrument seem to have a better grasp even with the technology aspect. I just noticed when I was walking around asking the students if they played instruments and the ones that had generally had a better grasp of how to navigate the computers. It was a cool correlation to see on my own but hopefully that lesson plan got some of them excited and wanting to play music. We also let them experiment with Garage Band if they wanted to after using Melody Street website. Generally Garage Band is difficult to navigate but has the same purpose of letting their creative sides come out. The students that chose to use Garage Band struggled with using the program at first, but after about 10 minutes they were helping each other to use it, which is cool to see peer helping peer before the teacher. It seems like the students get it better when one of their own peers explains something to them opposed to the instructor. This was supposed to be our last week, however Tressa needs to do one more so I am planning on going next Thursday also so she doesn't have to teach all by herself with the kids. The class size we received this week was much more manageable than the previous week, we had about 7 or 8 less students but still had over 10 this week which seemed to be a better number of kids and they were less wild.  

Lesson Plan #3/Observation

Today I thought that I had the ability to design a lesson plan about Indian Education since it is one of the standards in every year of school in Montana. What I did is printed out sheets of paper with 9 of the Native American tribes and I am going to ask each student to Google which ever one they want and find a picture of traditional Indian headdress and then compare the pictures next week with the rest of the class. I think this would show them that each tribe is classified as Native American but the tribes themselves differ tremendously throughout the state. To continue this additionally next week I want them to remember which tribe they choose and I want them to find something unique that is solely an example of each tribes individuality. I think this addresses the stereotypes as well that they all have the same problems and Natives are one homogeneous group of people which is completely false. This plan should work for either groups of students whether they are K-2 or 3-5 which is one of the things I am figuring out is going to be hard to design lesson plans that will be effective for all age groups.

We ended up using Tressa's lesson plan for tech club which was a interesting website that had educational video's. It ended up being a pretty productive day in the tech club the first day that there weren't any huge surprises. Although we ended up having about 24 students in the tech club that day so it was hard to help everyone. I would have appreciated if we only had 8 to 10 kids per session because it was very hectic and loud with all of them. I had to raise my voice multiple times and count down from five on my hand to get them to be quiet. Sometimes I feel as though it is hard at Whittier because we get a different group of kids each time and I know other group that were continuing lesson plans from week to week and it is simply too hard to do that at Whittier with the differences in our groups and age groups weekly. Although the lesson plans once we get the kids up and running on them are liking it quite a bit, I wanted to do something with Google Earth next week but when I checked to see if they had the program they didn't and I would have to download it. We'll figure out something fun for next week probably with a Thanksgiving theme.

Lesson Plan #2/Observation

Lesson Plan #2

                Today is going to be our first real day in a sense because the other cohort is finally done, the other cohorts were working on doing Google earth and it was unsuccessful because the computers at the school will not allow them to use the program without a password. Then they tried to teach them PowerPoint and it was unsuccessful because they were too easily bored. Since today is Halloween we decided that we are going to teach them how to search from Google and they are going to look up pictures of what they are going to be dressed at tonight. Copy and paste the image into a Microsoft Word document, and then write a caption about their costume. Then they will share them with us as a group. Like a show and tell of what they are going to be for Halloween tonight. If for some reason that fails we have a backup bingo plan using math and the PDF file with the questions and answers on a sheet. If they are feeling like they want to not play bingo then we will draw and color. We have a feeling they are going to be juiced on sugar today and be very difficult to handle hopefully that will not play a part with how much time we get today, If they are misbehaving we generally get them a little late, but I understand the need to calm them down to come to tech club.   

Observation:
Unfortunately, we got the kindergartners and 1st graders which was kind of unexpected because the first cohort said they never got the kindergartners so we didn't prepare a lesson plan for kids that young. Unfortunately that is part of the after school program at Whitter we are going to get older and younger kids, I think the solution might be writing a lesson plan each week for the 3rd through 5th grade and K through 2nd grade that way Tressa and I can both do a lesson plan for each and we can use them accordingly.
As for how the day went after that little hiccup, it was a hard day for them they were all getting excited for Halloween and had been hopped up on sugar the whole day resulting in very non attentive kids at the tech program. We had success with certain kids one-on-one, because our lesson plan was incapable of audible directions the one-on-one path worked. However it was hard to get around to each kid. They all needed help with the URL's. We ended up playing educational math games for the majority of the time while we went around helping the kids one-on-one. We asked Michael next time to allows us to have an older age group because they are simply easier to work with, but we are going to write lesson plans for each age group appropriately.

Integrating Technology experience #1

When Tressa and I showed up at Whitter today we were surprised to see that the people from the first cohort still had one day to complete their necessary requirements for the class also. Therefore we stepped aside with our own lesson plans because they had a lesson plan from the week before that they wanted to continue with, unfortunately we got the kids a bit late and after finally getting them settled down and all had the proper computers the content from the week before had been erased off all the computers. An unfortunate technical error on maybe their part and the schools part. They were told that their content would be saved for that week. However each kid was escorted to a new website to play educational games. It ended up being a bit of a bust because their content was deleted. However it gave Tressa and I good ideas for what we could do week to week if we wanted to build on a lesson plan and ask for the same group of kids. Were planning on meeting before Thursday to build and discuss our own lesson plan instead of making one each per week.  

Lesson Plan 10/24/13

Craig Harkey

10/24/13

Lesson Plan

                I thought since it is my first day without anyone from the first Cohort I thought it would be important to try to learn names. I found a name game online that will help me to get to know each student. Since my experience in the first observational study I understand how hard it is to get the kids to focus at 4 o’clock in the afternoon so I wanted to try something simple.

                I will get there early and put out computers and get them to the proper page, so I can start when they get there and we won’t have to run into the trouble of them getting the URL correct. My fear is that the link for the name game (http://www.fupa.com/play/Education-free-games/the-name-game.html) will not be allowed on the elementary computer network. Unfortunately if this occurs there is a website with Dr. Seuss games on it that are educationally friendly.  The project coordinator seems pretty adamant about their energy so my observational period the students arrived late unfortunately which made me think that I need to plan something attainable with the amount of time I am given.

http://pbskids.org/catinthehat/games/ here is the additional back up link to the Dr. Seuss games.

Hopefully I will get more time and ask the kids how they want to know how to use the computer and help them in that way.

Observational Day

At my first observational day it was kinda a weird day for an observation. Micheal (After School Coordinator) came in and told us that the kids had been exceptionally misbehaved and they were getting "cooled down" to come over to the tech club. This resulted in them being late and the girls running the club to alter their lesson plan slightly, which they did a great job doing. They got all the computers onto the same URL where educational spelling games were. When the kids did come in they all played the two available games. Then for the last little bit of time we drew and colored with crayons. They were having a tough day focusing it seemed like and needed some time to relax. Overall it was helpful to see how stressful a day could be that will help me writing my own lesson plan. I am realizing that my ASP ideas were a bit bold for the time and attention span we will be working with. 

Meeting The Principal

My first day at Whitter elementary, I got to meet the principal he was laid back and super nice. Kinda went through the ropes of what we were trying to accomplish integrating tech into technology. Basically this is an after school program, where we are going to be trying to have fun with the kids using the computers. He told us that the attention span at the end of the day is lacking, they have been in school already a whole day and trying to force them to learn about computer is going to be difficult. He encouraged us to think of short lesson plans as well as good games and in some cases a book to read to them. However he did encourage us to write lesson plans accordingly because those are good references for when we are teaching. I am going to additionally post my lesson plans here in the future.