Lesson Plan for Implementing

NETS•S—Template I
(More Directed Learning Activities)
Template with guiding questions
Teacher(s)
Name Taylor Beals

Position 7th grade Advanced/TAG Life Science

School/District Sandy Springs Charter Middle School/Fulton County

E-mail beals@fultonschools.org

Phone n/a

Grade Level(s) 7th grade

Content Area Life Science

Time line 5 days of 50 minutes class periods

Standards (What do you want students to know and be able to do? What knowledge, skills, and strategies do you
expect students to gain? Are there connections to other curriculum areas and subject area benchmarks? ) Please
put a summary of the standards you will be addressing rather than abbreviations and numbers that indicate which
standards were addressed.
Students will be working on understanding the terrestrial biomes and what their
identifying characteristics are.
S7L4: Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information to examine the interdependence of
organisms with one another and their environments.
S7L4d: Ask questions to gather and synthesize information from multiple sources to
differentiate between Earth’s major terrestrial biomes (i.e. tropical rain forest, savanna,
temperate forest, desert, grassland, taiga, and tundra) and aquatic ecosystems (i.e.
freshwater, estuaries, and marine).
Content Standards

3a: Students plan and employ effective research strategies to locate information and other
resources for the intellectual or creative pursuits.
3c: Students curate information from digital resources using a variety of tools and methods
to create collections of artifacts that demonstrate meaningful connections or conclusions.
3d: Students build knowledge by actively exploring real-world issues and problems,
developing ideas and theories and pursuing answers and solutions.
NETS*S Standards:

Overview (a short summary of the lesson or unit including assignment or expected or possible products)

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 Previous lesson/prior knowledge: Students will be exposed to all biomes before starting the project. They
will receive climate information, locations of biomes and special characteristics of each biome. This will be the
introduction to the science standard.

Lesson Overview/Project Overview: Students will become experts in one of the terrestrial biomes. They will
choose a biome to work on for the project with a partner. The project will have them creating a travel website to
promote people to visit their biome. They will include plant and animal life and what adaptations the organisms
have that help them to live in the climate. They will need to have include average monthly rainfall and average
monthly temperature in order to help identify the characteristics of the biome as well as see the similarities of
places even though they may be far away. They will include technology components in making a website,
making blog entries, creating online graphs, making a video component as well as using Google Earth/National
Geographic World Atlas.

Essential Questions (What essential question or learning are you addressing? What would students care or
want to know about the topic? What are some questions to get students thinking about the topic or generate
interest about the topic? Additionally, what questions can you ask students to help them focus on important
aspects of the topic? (Guiding questions) What background or prior knowledge will you expect students to bring
to this topic and build on?) Remember, essential questions are meant to guide the lesson by provoking inquiry.
They should not be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” and should have many acceptable answers.

How can you differentiate between the biomes?

Why do plant and animal life need to have certain adaptations to live in their environments?
How do I create a website?
What are important resources that people want to use to inform them when making a decision for a vacation?

Assessment (What will students do or produce to illustrate their learning? What can students do to generate new
knowledge? How will you assess how students are progressing (formative assessment)? How will you assess
what they produce or do? How will you differentiate products?) You must attach copies of your assessment and/or
rubrics. Include these in your presentation as well.

Students will create a website (directions attached) that will be assessed on a rubric . *attached Students will
generate new knowledge through research. I will formative assess student progress by checking in with each
partnership daily and making sure that students are creating around 1 page a day. I will differentiate by
students having choice in biomes as well as creative flexibility within the directions.

Resources (How does technology support student learning? What digital tools, and resources—online student
tools, research sites, student handouts, tools, tutorials, templates, assessment rubrics, etc—help elucidate or
explain the content or allow students to interact with the content? What previous technology skills should students
have to complete this project?)

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 Students will use a variety of digital tools to help them complete their website project:
 OneNote for directions
 OneNote for background/previous knowledge
 Weebly will be the suggested site for students to use to create their website
 Animoto will be suggested to showcase their website and be there summary video
 Blogging will be used on weebly to show “reviews” of website
 https://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/ to create graphs of average monthly rainfall and
temperature
 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/divisional/time-series Data Base to find real world data averages to
help make the graph
 Students have some knowledge about creating websites through their STEAM program competition
last school year
 Students are extremely familiar with OneNote

Instructional Plan
Preparation (What student needs, interests, and prior learning provide a foundation for this lesson? How can
you find out if students have this foundation? What difficulties might students have?)

Needs: Students will need to be given clear walk through on expectations of the project. They will need to be
given a refresher on how to make a website.

Interests: Students are extremely engaged when they create their own projects. They especially like when
they can choose what interests them so that is why they are choosing their biomes. They enjoy creating real
world projects especially when they can be presented online.

Prior Learning: Students will need to reflect on their prior knowledge about biomes in order to help them the
background knowledge to start the project. Students will need to feel comfortable working on their devices and
how to make things look for an online project.

Difficulties: Students will have difficulties with researching for the information they need. Google searching
becomes difficult because students think that the answer to be easy to find and at times it requires more
digging through websites. I predict some difficulty will be around managing their time in class and not spending
a lot of time on formatting and making things look “pretty”. Many of my SPED or 504 students are challenged
in being easily distracted but are high achieving when it comes to using technology.

Management Describe the classroom management strategies will you use to manage your students and the use
of digital tools and resources. How and where will your students work? (Small groups, whole group, individuals,
classroom, lab, etc.) What strategies will you use to achieve equitable access to the Internet while completing this
lesson? Describe what technical issues might arise during the Internet lesson and explain how you will resolve or
trouble-shoot them? Please note: Trouble-shooting should occur prior to implementing the lesson as well as
throughout the process. Be sure to indicate how you prepared for problems and work through the issues that
occurred as you implemented and even after the lesson was completed.

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 Classroom Management: Students will work in partners in order to better monitor that all group members are
working on the project. The students will move at their own pace with me walking around and stopping to
check on partnerships. Students sitting with partner at any of the science tables. Directions will be pulled up
on the projector in order for students to look up and quickly reference what they need to be doing. The
classwork section of the board will state that students are working on the project; however, will include the
specific completion goal for that class period. For example: Biome Travel Project- you should be able to
complete page 3 Plant Life today.

Troubleshooting Problems: Students have a specific schedule to follow when it comes to troubleshooting so
if they problem is larger enough they can get help from the media center during 4 th or 7th periods.
Problems that I typically solve during a class period:
 Lost charge- student may use my personal device charger, use their own charger or another student in
the classroom, or they may use the desktop computers in the back of the room.
 No device- work on partner’s device, use desktop computers in the back, or write a pass to the media
center to work on the computers in there.
 Problems with device- force restart the device, hold the power button for over 20 seconds which leads
to either the device working, needing to use a partner’s device or the computers in the back.

Instructional Strategies and Learning Activities – Describe the research-based instructional strategies you will
use with this lesson. How will your learning environment support these activities? What is your role? What are the
students' roles in the lesson? How can you ensure higher order thinking at the analysis, evaluation, or
creativity levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy? How can the technology support your teaching? What authentic,
relevant, and meaningful learning activities and tasks will your students complete? How will they build knowledge
and skills? How will students use digital tools and resources to communicate and collaborate with each other
and others? How will you facilitate the collaboration?

Instructional and Learning Strategies: Students will be asked to use their creativity skills when it comes to
creating the website and expressing to others why they should travel to their biome. Students will show their
creativity through the video creation and the details of the project. Students will analyze real world data for the
amount of rainfall and temperature in different areas and they will need to interpret how the graph will look and
how this compares with other locations in the same biome as well as other biomes. Students will be creating
this in a simulation effect of a real-world context by thinking through what is important for people to know when
they are traveling somewhere for the first time. They will need to think through what would catch someone’s
eye and make them want to visit. Technology will allow the students to receive data instantly to support their
ideas for their project. Students will communicate with their partner about how to create the project, they will
communicate with the whole classroom when they present their projects, and they will collaborate with their
math class in order to create the graphs and necessary background information to each the average monthlies.
I will facilitate collaboration by planning with the math teachers and communicating where students are in their
understanding of the content that they will explore and use to create the graphs. I will facilitate collaboration in
the classroom by actively monitoring the project completion process.

Differentiation (How will you differentiate content and process to accommodate various learning styles and
abilities? How will you help students learn independently and with others? How will you provide extensions and
opportunities for enrichment? What assistive technologies will you need to provide?)

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 I will differentiate content by allow student choice on what biome with will create the project about as well as the
locations/cities chosen within the biome. The process can be differentiated by allowing students to work at their
own pace and in whatever order. Another way that I will differentiate the process, students that need more
structure to pacing will be working at the teacher directed table with me so that I can walk them through and
prompt them through the project. I will provide extension opportunities by telling students that they can go
beyond the necessary 7 pages and research some travel sites and see what else they will need to include in
order to get people to come to the location. Enrichment opportunities will include students coming up with
unique ways to showcase the information beyond the suggested websites and methods. My students are
highly creative and always surprise me when I give them loose directions around a project.

Reflection (Will there be a closing event? Will students be asked to reflect upon their work? Will students be
asked to provide feedback on the assignment itself? What will be your process for answering the following
questions?
• Did students find the lesson meaningful and worth completing?
• In what ways was this lesson effective?
• What went well and why?
• What did not go well and why?
• How would you teach this lesson differently?)

 Yes, I think students will find this lesson meaningful. I have had several students begging me to
include a website project this year. The science teacher they had last year has told me how much my
students enjoyed it last year. I think they will enjoy the project and appreciate looking at biomes in a
different way.
 I will assess to see if the lesson was effective by reflecting on the rubric and the websites. Were the
descriptions and summaries thought provoking or did students rush and copy?
 I think that parts that will go the best will be the animal and plant life pages. Students will view them as
“easier” to complete and have the best time completing them.
 I think the parts that will be a struggle will be the graph of average monthly rainfall and temperature.
This is the most important part to understand and students will simply want to copy what they find
online but I want them to create their own and truly understand the graphs.
 If I were to do this project differently, I would want to explore more about wikis to see if this format is
better suited for this project’s ideas.

Closure: Anything else you would like to reflect upon regarding lessons learned and/or your experience with
implementing this lesson. What advice would you give others if they were to implement the lesson? Please
provide a quality reflection on your experience with this lesson and its implementation.
I would recommend if someone is looking to implementing this project, they have a deep understanding of their
students’ level of comfort with creating online projects. My students were very familiar, so I was able to have a
more hands-off approach in those parts and could concentrate more on the content parts. I would also look into
have a more interactive project instead of the information simply being created to be put out there and not
interacted with. For example, could students create their own web quests? How can students provide each
other with feedback instead of them getting in front of the classroom to present their websites? Is it possible to
create a virtual reality? I think the possibilities are endless when it comes to creating a more web 3.0 approach
to this project.

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