In CEP 815, we had to choose one of the topics we had learned about in the class and make a screencast to teach others about the concept.  I chose to explain the differences between instrumental and missional thinking.
Click the link to see the video:
Instrumental vs. Missional Thinking in 1 minute

CEP 800 Lesson Plan Reflection

My lesson focused around students writing a personal narrative and turning it into a digital story using an iPad application called Shadow Puppet Edu. Writing quality personal narratives is a topic that encompasses an entire unit of study, so for the purposes of this project I had a student write a quick personal narrative giving him a brief instruction on what should be included in the narrative.

Since this portion of the class takes place after the school year has ended, I worked with two children that my sister babysits for in the summer; Leo is 9 years old and Gavin is 12. To start the lesson, I sat down with Leo and explained what a personal narrative is. From there, I asked him to think of a recent topic that he would like to write a story about. While he was writing the story, I noticed that he was making some grammar mistakes and I intentionally did not bring them to his attention with in order to see if he would notice his mistakes and fix them when creating his digital story.

Once he was finished writing his story, I gave him an overview of the app and showed him how to use it. He took pictures of each page of his story and added text, background music, and dialogue to each page. While he was recording himself, he noticed some of the grammar mistakes I had mentioned previously. I was pleased to see this and I encouraged him to fix the mistakes and re-record the story with the corrections. When he completed the entire digital story, we watched the finished product together and it turned out great! Leo was really pleased with his work and immediately wanted to share his project with his parents.

The learning goals that were accomplished in this portion of the lesson were: using technology to produce and publish writing, and creating engaging audio recordings of stories. My goal was to help Leo write a narrative and to make sure he had a clear understanding of how to use the technology. I also hoped that the recording portion of the lesson would help aid in his ability to make revisions to his writing. The knowledge was being represented through the use of the app, which is a great way to engage students and tie in the technology standards. The constraints were that the students would have to learn how to use the application before being able to complete the task, which in a large group setting, is more challenging. Internet connectivity problems in my school setting could be a constraint as well because we occasionally have problems with the Wi-Fi when many students are trying to use the same program all at once. The learning takes place through direct instruction while students are learning how to write the narrative and how to use the Shadow Puppet app.  Finally, the learning is completed individually while students are writing the personal narrative and completing the digital story. Cognitive Constructivism is present because learners will be constructing their own understanding based on what is taught in the mini lessons. Scaffolding is used because learners are able to start small and build on their work at their own pace.

This lesson was based on a writing unit that I expanded on and added a technology piece to. Writing narratives is a topic that is taught every year at the elementary level, but each year the lessons get more in-depth. By the time the students get to 3^rd grade, the majority of them seem to be tired of this repetitive writing style, so I wanted to enhance this topic by adding the technology component to the lesson. This lesson works well for all ability levels because students are able to write stories at their own ability level. Also with the help of the teacher, students with disabilities would easily be able to manipulate the app to create a digital story.

For this lesson to be successful the students need to have a basic understanding of how to write a personal narrative and how to use an iPad. Teachers need to have knowledge on how to teach writing using a workshop model and be familiar with using an iPad and the Shadow Puppet app in order to teach the students how to use it and to be familiar with how to add the additional features to the digital story. Then the teacher will have to facilitate students throughout the entire process, while writing the stories and troubleshooting any problems students might face with the app. In testing out the lesson, the majority of the assessing was done through formative assessment since I was working with the student independently and could assess his skills through observation. For the actual lesson with a large group of students, however, I would assess the students by conferencing with them throughout the writing process.  The summative assessment would be done when the students share their completed digital story with me so I could view and grade it using a rubric.

Technology was added to the existing lesson to enhance student engagement and expand the Common Core standards being addressed. The advantages of the technology are that it engages students by giving them a fun and creative way to publish their writing and also gives them the ability to share their work with an audience other than the teacher. The disadvantage of using technology incorporated with this lesson would be the time added to the unit. There would be time added onto the unit to teach students how to use the app and to give students the time to create their digital project. Overall the implementation of this lesson helped me see that the Shadow Puppet app was very easy to use and was highly appealing to the student. In fact, as soon as Leo got home, he immediately downloaded the app onto his own iPad and was creating more digital stories! Leo did not have a lot of technology related questions because I was able to sit with him and help him navigate through the app. The technology made the concept of revising more apparent to Leo because he was immediately able to hear his grammar mistakes when he read his story out loud and was able to fix them as he went. I was really pleased to see this happening since revising and editing are areas that students struggle with.

CEP 800 Lesson Plan

This week in CEP 800 I created a lesson plan for a unit that incorporates students writing personal narratives and publishing them creating a digital story using the app called Shadow Puppet Edu.

Unit Topic: Writing a personal narrative and publishing it using a digital story.

This is an overview of an entire unit on writing personal narratives that would cover approximately 13-16 days.

Benchmarks:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.3
Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.6
With guidance and support from adults, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.3.5
Create engaging audio recordings of stories or poems that demonstrate fluid reading at an understandable pace; add visual displays when appropriate to emphasize or enhance certain facts or details.

Essential Questions:

1.     How can ideas be generated and selected for personal narrative writing?

2.     How do writers add details and dialogue to a narrative piece?

3.     How do writers focus and sequence ideas in a draft?

4.     How can writers revise and edit to improve the quality of their writing?

Materials: Writer’s notebook, pencil, colored pencils, iPad, headphones

Formative Assessment: Conferencing with students throughout the unit

Summative Assessment: Digital story created in Shadow Puppet Edu

Unit Sequence:

Day 1: Generate ideas by thinking of special people and places. Students learn the purpose of a writer's notebook and a strategy for generating personal narrative entries.

Day 2: Use descriptive details to paint a picture. Students learn more strategies for generating personal narrative entries.

Day 3: Include descriptive details to describe the setting. Students learn how to use descriptive details and specific words to create scenes in their stories.

Day 4: Create a clear sequence of events. Students learn that writers tell their stories using a timeline to unfold the sequence of events.

Day 5: Choosing one idea. Students learn how to choose one idea that matters the most and draft the whole story as it comes to mind.

Day 6: Use specific verbs. Student will use specific verbs to make their writing clear.

Day 7: Telling the internal story. Students learn how writers include the internal story using their thoughts, feelings, and responses to what is happening.

Day 8: Revising leads. Students learn how to improve their leads by studying the work of published authors.

Day 9: Revising endings. Students learn how to improve their story endings by studying the work of published authors.

Day 10: Revision. Students revise for meaning and clarity.

Day 11: Editing. Students learn that writers use a revision/editing checklist to edit their stories.

Day 12-14: Publishing personal narratives. Students create final drafts from their revised and edited personal narratives using a digital storytelling application.

Day 15: Celebrate. Students share their published personal narratives/ digital stories with an audience.

1. Content: 
The content I am teaching is writing a personal narrative and publishing it using a digital story. These concepts are addressed using the following Common Core standards: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences, use technology to produce and publish writing (using keyboarding skills) as well as to interact and collaborate with others, and create engaging audio recordings of stories or poems that demonstrate fluid reading at an understandable pace; add visual displays when appropriate to emphasize or enhance certain facts or details. One challenging topic is getting students to dig deep and add strong details and verbs to their writing. It is also difficult to get students to make corrections to their writing during the editing and revision processes.

2. Pedagogy:
The lesson will start out using a behaviorism strategy.  I will provide students with the initial information by teaching mini lessons on the writing topics and the students will be active listeners. Using the cognitive constructivism approach, I will model examples of good writing by using mentor texts.  Then the students will guide their own learning, by taking what they learned in the mini lesson and applying it to their own writing. Throughout this process I will conference with students who are struggling to make sure they are on the right track and help them develop their ideas when necessary. Finally, once the students have learned how to use the Shadow Puppet app, I will move into a facilitator role while the students independently publish their writing into a digital story.

3. Content & Pedagogy:

These strategies work well for teaching this content because the students need be taught what effective writing looks like, sounds like, and feels like before they are able to become successful writers themselves. Seeing the teacher write examples and hearing examples of good writing from published authors does this. Once students have been taught how to write a successful narrative piece, most of them are able to go off and write on their own. However, there are still some that struggle with writing and will need the teacher to meet with them on a regular basis to help overcome these obstacles, which is why conferencing with students during writing workshop is an important teaching strategy I chose to use. 

4. Technology: 

The technology I will be using is an iPad application called Shadow Puppet Edu because it is a very user-friendly and geared towards kids, it can be downloaded for free on my classroom set of iPads, and I heard wonderful things about it from other teachers who have used it. This technology is also a great choice because it has the capabilities for students to share their work with many types of audiences. The technology would not be necessary to teach the writing standards, but it is necessary to cover the standards that pertain to using technology to produce and publish writing and creating engaging audio recordings of stories.

5. Technology & Pedagogy: 

The technology aligns with my pedagogy strategies because it allows for a cognitive constructivism approach where the students take on the role of an active thinker and independently develop a way to create a published digital story using technology. This technology also enables them to use audio recordings to develop their final product into a coherent piece that can be shared with many different audiences, such as peers, teachers, and parents. 

6. Technology & Content: 

The Shadow Puppet App will help teach the big ideas by giving students the opportunity to look more closely at their finished writing product to see if they have included all of the concepts and details that an effective personal narrative needs. While students are working with the app and putting each piece of their narrative into a digital story format, they will be more likely to see if there is anything that needs to be changed or added to their story to make it sound better. I also think students will be more engaged in accounting for all of the necessary concepts when they know that there will be an opportunity to share their final product with an audience in the end.   

7. Assessment: 

In the end, I want the students to demonstrate that they can create a personal narrative with a clear sequence of events using strong details, verbs, and dialogue. I want them to demonstrate that they can edit and revise their stories to develop coherent published writing pieces. The published digital story should also include engaging audio to grab the audience’s attention and show fluid reading. I will formatively assess what students have learned by conferring with them throughout the writing process. For a summative assessment, I will have the students share their completed digital story with me via email and I will grade them using a rubric that includes all of the topics listed above.

Digital Slideshow

I created this Digital Slideshow for CEP 800 to demonstrate how the cognitive constructivism theory was used during a lesson I taught on the solar system. This was my first experience using iMovie and I thought the program was pretty easy to use once I got the hang of it.

CEP 800 Audio Interview

This week in CEP 800 I created a podcast using Audacity. The purpose of this project was to learn how to create and edit a high quality audio file. In the podcast, you will hear me interviewing one of my students on the topics of sunrise and sunset. My focus in the interview is to see what misconceptions the student might have about this topic.