technology unit plan/Tahan 1

Project-Based Unit Plan

CTGE 5910 Computers and Technology for Educators

Summer 2009
Prof. Gura
Mary M. Tahan
August 3, 2009
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Lesson Plan: Farm Animals Teacher: Mary M. Tahan

Class: K-2 ESL/Science No. of students: about 20-24
Date: Fall ’09 Period: 50 minutes

Last year, I taught a self-contained 2nd grade ESL class at PS 92 in Corona, Queens. This
coming year, I will be doing push-in and pull-out ESL classes at PS 92 and I don’t yet
know what grade level I’ll be working with (I may be assigned to different classes from
K-5) or how many students at one time. So I designed this Unit Plan with my old 2nd-
grade students in mind. All students were Hispanic (in fact, in PS 92, virtually all students
are Hispanic and a large number are ESL). Students were at various levels of proficiency
in English. Two were beginners, 10 were intermediate, 8 were advanced, and two had
already passed their NYSESLAT but were still placed in an ESL classroom. I only had
two computers in my room last year; at most, some classrooms have 3 or 4 computers. So
I will assume that the classroom for this unit’s lessons will only have two computers.

Topic/Aim: Farm animals

Curriculum/Academic Areas Involved: ESL, Science

Standards

ESL Standard 1:
Students will listen, speak, read, and write in English for information and
understanding. Students learning English as a second language will use English to
acquire, interpret, apply, and transmit information for content area learning and
personal use.

1.2: Read, gather, view, listen to, organize, discuss, and interpret
information related to academic content areas from various sources.
1.3: Select information appropriate to the purpose of the investigation, and
relate ideas from one written or spoken source to another.
1.4: Compare, contrast, and categorize, to gain a deeper understanding of
information and objects.
1.7: Present information clearly in a variety of oral and written forms for
different audiences and purposes related to all academic content areas.
1.13: Engage in collaborative activities through a variety of student
groupings to read, gather, share, discuss, interpret, organize, and present
information.

Science Standard 4

Key Idea 1: Living things are both similar to and different from each other and
nonliving things.
• Elementary—describe the characteristics of and variations between living and
nonliving things describe the life processes common to all living things
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Technology Standard 2—Information Systems

Students will access, generate, process, and transfer information using appropriate
technologies.
Elementary
• Information technology is used to retrieve, process, and communicate
information and as a tool to enhance learning. Students:
1. use a variety of equipment and software packages to enter, process,
display, and communicate information in different forms using text,
tables, pictures, and sound.
2. telecommunicate a message to a distant location with teacher help.
3. access needed information from printed media, electronic data bases,
and community resources.

Objectives: SWBAT
• describe four characteristics that make certain animals suitable for farming
(compare/contrast farm animals with wild animals)
• give the several names (female, male, baby) of five farm animals: cow, pig,
chicken, sheep, and goats
• describe the physical appearance and diet of these animals
• list resources people obtain from these animals

Materials:
• computer
• printer
• computer paper
• large chart paper for the activities not done at the computer
• books for read-alouds and individual and guided reading, for those students not at
the computer

Prior Knowledge/Motivation
• I’ll ask children what they know about farm animals before we begin the unit. On
a traditional K-W-L chart (not on computer but on paper), I will write down what
students already know. We’ll generate the what-we-want-to-know questions with
prompting, as needed, from me.
• I will pose the question: What if a Martian landed on Earth and didn’t know
anything about our animals. Could we teach him?
• Students will be divided into 5 groups of probably 4 or 5 students per group.
Since the room has only 2 computers, 2 groups will be on the computer on a given
day while the rest will be on the rug or at their desks for traditional lessons.
• After filling in the “K” and “W” sections of the K-W-L charts, two groups will be
sent to the computer to work on “Day 1” activities on the blog.
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• The students not at the computers will be receiving read-alouds and other
activities on the rug and at their desks

Teaching Procedures
[NOTE: Given that only 2 groups can be on the 2 computers available, each “day’s”
activity will take about three or more days to complete. In a perfect world, there would be
lots of computers and all groups would be on them each day.]

Day 1: Students will listen to the Martian Zork’s request for information (on a Voki)
which outlines the questions about farm animals we will explore through the unit.
They will watch a video that will answer the question, “What makes some
animals suitable for farming?” Then students will print out a graphic organizer
and fill in the characteristics that make some animals suitable for farming.

Day 2: Each group will view two short videos about various farm animals produced by
school children close to their age (downloaded from schooltube.com) and they
will visit a variety of websites to investigate the animal assigned to their group:
cow, pig, sheep, goat, or chicken. They will gather information about the names of
their animals; their physical appearance, their diet; the resources the animals
provide. Students will fill out an interactive (readwritethink.com) graphic
organizer detailing their group’s animal.

Day 3: Groups will focus on word-work, with a variety of interactive online puzzles; fact
sheets to print out and color; flashcards to cut–and-paste; a variety of word-search
puzzles, from easy to difficult. The follow-up activity is to print out, cut and paste
the pictures to the 20 vocabulary words and write each vocabulary word 5 times.

Day 4: The final project is a PowerPoint slideshow presentation. Since students are only
seven-years-old, I’ve already created the slideshow. Students only have to fill in
the information given in the prompts on the various slides. Page 4 of the
slideshow is an example to the students.

Assessment and Evaluation

Day 1: The students are asked to fill out a graphic organizer with the 4 characteristics in
animals that make them suitable (or desirable) for farming. If I notice that
students can’t fill out the organizer, I can do a mini-lesson about how to watch
and listen carefully to videos and how to take notes.
Day 2: Students will be assessed on their readwritethink animal-inquiry graphic
organizer. If students have difficulty filling in the organizer, I can do a mini-lesson
about how to explore websites and locate the information needed to answer the 4
specific questions outlined in the Day 2 activity.
Day 3: Students will be assessed on their cut-and-paste vocabulary words. Can students
find the right meaning to match the word? If they have difficulty, I can do further
mini-vocab lessons and games.
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Day 4: Students will be assessed on how they fill in the information about their animals
into the PPT Slide Show. Since this is a second-grade class, I’ve not asked them to
create the powerpoint slides. The slides have been created for them with prompts
on each slide to guide them as to the information needed to be slotted in. If
students have trouble, a mini-lesson on how to gather our information and type it
in can be given. [For advanced students who may find the exercise too easy, a
“bonus” assignment could be given wherein they create their own slide show.
However, this is not on the blog because, given the lack of computers in the
classroom, I don’t know how that bonus activity could be implemented.]

Reflection

This was a blast to work on—very hard and painstaking—but a blast. I learned a lot!

As for the unit-plan design, I can’t tell at this point if there’s too much or too little for
students to do and whether the “follow-up” assignments are too easy or too hard. I guess
it would take a trial run of this to learn what works and what doesn’t work.

Also, given the lack of access to computers, this whole plan might be very hard to
implement. While only 2 groups of students can be on the 2 computers on a given day, I
will be instructing the other students, either in lessons/read-alouds on the rug or the
students could be doing independent reading and note-taking using a variety of books.
But what happens when I’m called by the students at the computers who may have
difficulty navigating through the blog or videos or website links? They will be calling for
me, but I may be involved with the students on the rug or at other areas. It’s hard for one
teacher to be available to 22+ students at one time (I ran into that frustrating problem all
last year.)

In a perfect world, the class would be 12 students or less and all groups in the classroom
would be on the computers at the same time, and I would circulate giving assistance as
needed. (A teacher can dream. . . )