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 3rd 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment