Lessons

Website Veracity 

This lesson was developed for a Marlboro College Graduate School course on Instructional Design.  I used a combination of Google Slides, Twine and Google forms to build a lesson about Website Veracity.  The object is for students to use the CRAAP test to evaluate a website and see if it has any value.  The link below will take you to the Google Slide presentation, and from there you will see embedded links to each activity.

Wacky Website Week

Digital Citizenship and Google Slides

Grade 5

In teaching digital citizenship to my 5th grade students, I introduced them to the FBI Safe Online Surfing Site.  We spent 2 weeks exploring all the lessons and games at their level and then on the third week, each student took the exam.  The exam was a list of multiple choice questions and although the students did well, I wasn't sure what they really learned, so I decided to have them put their skills using Google Slides(reviewed in class earlier in the year) to good use. Each student had to share one thing that they learned from the FBI site and create a slide.  They had one class period to select their topic, chosen from the various topics covered in the FBI site, add some basic text, a picture and their name.  It was a unique form of assessment as it showed what they had retained from the Slides lesson and what stood out from the Digital Citizenship lesson.

Digital Citizenship Presentation

After reviewing their slides I realized that they had a good handle on using slides, and for the most part, got some valuable knowledge from the Digital Citizenship lessons.  What did strike me immediately is that kids didn't have a very good understanding about the differences between copyright and plagiarism. This is clearly something that will need a mini-lesson before the school year is out!

Make Way for Ducklings and Google Earth

Grade 2

This is a lesson that I adapted from a couple of other lessons that I found online.  I begin by reading Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McClosky.  This is a classic story about a family of ducks who travel over and through the city of Boston, MA. After reading the story, we move to the SMART Board for an interactive Lit Trip.  This takes us on the same journey as the ducks using Google Maps through the city of Boston.  It is a great introduction to all the features available in Google Maps; zooming in and out, street views, earth view vs. map view, etc.  

During the next lesson, students use Google Maps to identify their town, their address and the addresses of some of the important buildings in their town.   They also choose another location, either in the state or around the world, and use the "directions" feature to discover how far away that location is from their own address.  

During the third week of unit, students participate in a variety of activities that include researching duck information in library books, completing a KWL chart on ducks, using the National Geographic Kids website to learn more about Mallard Ducks, and an animal Bingo game.