Activities for Incorporating Technology

1. Homework & Practice

1.1. Flipped Classroom Activities- A flipped classroom lesson requires students to complete a portion of the next days assignment or project the night before for homework. This gives the classroom an extended amount of time to dedicate to a hands on activity that occurs in the classroom. This lesson will require students to conduct research, watch videos, and complete a pre-lab online at home for homework. The next day, the students can apply what they learned from their research to that days lesson.

1.2. Khan Academy Activity- In class, the teacher can help students develop their Khan academy logins. This gives the teacher the ability to view the lessons students complete while monitoring their progress and growth. For Homework, students will be required to review an assigned video review that days lesson. Students will then complete a quiz on Khan Academy and be required to complete a quiz built into the website. The teacher will receive notification of the students’ scores and what kind of questions they need assistance with.

2. Non-linguistic Representations

2.1. Water Cycle Diagram- This lesson will help give to better understand the water cycle by developing a visual representation of the water cycle. Students will be required to use an online drawing program such as sketchpad.com or drawisland.com to develop a diagram of the water cycle. Students will draw each part of the water cycle including the sun, clouds, water, rain and evaporation. The students will then be required to draw arrows that illustrate the the cycle occurring on their diagram.

2.2. Determining Coin Value Game - In this lesson, students will play an online game that helps reinforce their knowledge of coin values. The game is Coin Shoot 2, located at sheppardsofware.com. This game requires students to select the correct value of a coin that appears on the screen. The game contains different levels of difficulty each with their own speed and amount of coins included. Students will be required to mark their high score and will attempt to beat it at a later date.

3. Cooperative Learning

3.1. Group Essay Project- A group essay project consists of students being placed in groups of three to complete a five paragraph essay on character development in “To Kill a Mockingbird” using google docs. Students will create a shared document that each in the group have access to. Each students will pick on character from the book and complete a paragraph describing how that character changes through the course of the book. Students will work together to peer review each others writings. Using the paragraphs that each student develops, the group will work together to develop a thesis statement, an introduction paragraph and a conclusion paragraph.

3.2. Robot Building Activity- This robot building activity will involve students working together to design, build and program a robot to complete a task. This activity does require VEXRobitics kit that can be purchased from vexrobotics.com. Over a given time, students will design their robot with the idea of it completing a desired task. Students will draw sketches and decide on the most important aspects of their robot. Students will then be required to build their robot using the VEXRobotic kit. Lastly, students will use a computer to program the robot to complete a task.

4. Similarities and Differences

4.1. Creatly: This website specializing in online graphic organizer creation. Teachers can encourage students to explore similarities and differences by assigning groups of students to work simultaneously on a Venn Diagram or Double Bubble Thinking Map to demonstrate knowledge of similarities and difference in a cooperative learning style.

4.2. Mindmeister: Utilizing this online mind map generator students can examine similarities and differences. This can be done individually, small group, or whole group. This site allows mind maps to be edited, shared, and worked on collaboratively. The teacher can even print the one done whole group to guide students in creating their own.

5. Summarizing & Note Taking

5.1. Digital Note Taking Practice- Digital note taking practice is used to help students develop the ability to summarize and pick key information from the text. This digital note taking practice includes slides that contain guided notes and summarizing practice. Each slide includes questions that coincide with lesson or video to assist in learning how to pinpoint the important aspects of a lesson while practicing typing.

5.2. Google Classroom Cornell Note Practice- Google classroom cornell note practice is an online lesson developed using google classroom. The teacher create a template for the classes cornell notes. Each time the class is taking notes, the teacher adds questions to the left side of the notes. Students are instructed to answer the questions throughout the lecture. This helps students to build a baseline of the kind of questions and information should be absorbed from lessons. As the students progress, they will be required to ask their own questions, slowly weaning them off of the guided note taking process.

6. Reinforcing Effort and Recognition

6.1. Class Dojo: This online tool allows teachers to provide points for students based upon behaviors and effort. The teacher can set the specific behaviors that earn points. The student's family has an account and can view positive points earned. This allows students to reflect on specific behaviors that the teacher praised them for.

6.2. Google Classroom Writing: Writing is an academic skill highly based upon feedback. Teachers can support their students along the way by utilizing Google Classroom for writing assignments. Within each assignment the teacher is able to view every students' response as they are wroking on it. The teacher can leave comments in the margins as students work in class or at home. Teachers can use this highly effective tools to reinforce efforts and provide recognition to students.

7. Generating & Testing Hypotheses

7.1. Rabbit Population Simulation- The rabbit population simulator is an online activity that gives students the chance develop a hypothesis of what how a rabbit population can change and test it in real time. The simplator is called natural selection can be found at phet.edu. The simulator focuses on rabbits living in the wild, the student has the ability to change inputs that may affect the rabbit population. These inputs include operations such as weather, predators and food for the rabbits. The students manipulate the rabbits habitat and develop a hypothesis of what they believe will happen to the rabbit population. The students the run the simulation to determine if their hypothesis was correct.

7.2. Peppered Moth Activity- The peppered moth activity is an interactive online program that explores the peppered moth and it connection to natural selection. It starts with an in depth overview of the lifecycle of a moth. The activity then explains how peppered moths changed color overtime during the industrial revolution and how scientist hypothesized why. The activity then show students how scientists developed their hypothesis and the experiment they conducted to prove it true. The activity ends with an interactive game showing the camouflage the peppered moths developed protected them from predators. The peppered moth activity can be found at peppermoths.weebly.com

8. Cues, Questions, and Advanced Organizers

8.1. Google Slides Collaboration: Reading text is an effective time to practice levels of cues and questions. Utilizing higher level questioning can be challenging for students. In groups, students can create higher level questions and cues for other students in Google Slides. Multiple students can collaborate at the same time to develop questions for their peers. Then, other groups can trade slides and respond to the questions their peers generated.

8.2. Advanced Organizers: Teachers can use Creatly or Mindmeister, both of which were previously mentioned in the similarities and differences section, to create an advanced organizer for students. A third website to create an advanced organizer is Popplet. This website is another example of mind mapping combined with graphic organizers. It can be done collaboratively, saved, and/or edited later to add new knowledge. Students could save their own copy to add notes to during class as they explore each topic the teacher noted on the advanced organizer.