In reviewing our original Lesson Plan 1.0 designed or a Grade 1 class. I have to adapt this lesson plan to suit a class that I would teach this in. The grade level that I would be teaching this lesson in is Grade 4. The addition lesson will have the students using the Squishy Circuit Kit to play a game. As the students move around the game board they will have to answer addition questions. They will then have to touch their electrode to an answer on the board. If it lights up the answer is correct, and if it does not light up, the answer is incorrect.
Squishy Circuit Kit
This revised lesson 2.0 uses technology to assist in assessing the students knowledge of addition applied to different concepts within the area of number. The students will be looking at and applying the concepts of addition of integers simple fractions and addition within story problems. The lesson uses a Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) style to integrate technology effectively into instruction. This lesson offers a way to integrate technology into pedagogy and content to effectively teach and assess students about addition of numbers.
Technology is used in this lesson to assess the concepts of addition within fractions, story problems and addition equations. A piece of feedback that I received was that elementary students do not have a long attention span an that it is important to put many smaller activities in a single lesson to keep them focused upon the task they are required to do. As our original lesson plan1.0 was for Grade 1 and the revised one is for Grade 4…hope their attention span will last a little longer! This is an important consideration that all elementary teachers need to consider, although with the introduction of technology, these digital devices seem to hold the students for longer periods of time.
One big hurdle that I would have to overcome with the game is that the students could easily see the previous question and just touch the correct tab to get it to light up without thinking the problem through. To do this I would have to have several cards per game board section with a variety of questions on the cards i.e. the student when landing on a square may be faced with the following types of problems to the answer of 50:
- 45 + 5 =
- 50 + ? = 100
- ? + 35 = 50
The same can be done with a fraction answer. By adding a variety of question cards to each game square.
The other part that I added to my revised Lesson Plan 2.0 was that I would ask the students if they could come up with any ideas to improve this for future use or to use in another class of Grade 4 students. Because what I may this is ‘just fantastic’ they might not!
Initially I found this task quite difficult as I was focused on the technology and began to developed a lesson around this, rather than being focused on the content and allowing technology to assist with the content. The other part of TPACK that I like is that it needs to be seamless without focusing on one or the other. This lesson forced me to look at the ‘big picture’ before charging headlong into the activity. This process was good and I will be taking this back to my school and putting my teachers through the same process especially because we have so much technology in the school. Are we losing the content knowledge?
Good pedagogy is the key to successful teaching.
Websites used:
- TPACK – http://www.tpack.org/
- Squishy Circuit Kit – http://squishycircuitsstore.com/
Alan Morrison's MAETEL1 Blog 