Online Projects, Collaboration Sites and Publishing Opportunities

Lesson Idea Name: I believe that…

Content Area: Language Arts
Grade Level(s): Fourth Grade
Content Standard Addressed: ELAGSE4W1: Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of
view with reasons
Technology Standard Addressed: Publish or present content that customizes the message and medium for
their intended audience.

Selected Online Project/Collaboration Site/Publishing Opportunity: KidPub

URL(s) to support the lesson: https://www.kidpub.com/

https://www.studenthandouts.com/english/persuasive-writing/in-my-opinion-persuasive-writing-
worksheet.htm

Describe how you would incorporate an Online Project/Collaboration Site/Publishing Opportunity in your
classroom:
The lesson is focused on writing a persuasive and opinionated piece that includes the students’ opinion
statement, why they believe it, and why their audience should believe it too. For this lesson, there is a
publishing site incorporated into it, which is KidPub. After the students have written their pieces in the
graphic organizer and have a rough draft, they will type it out and publish their piece on KidPub.com. Of
course, they would need prior help to create logins, which can be done at home with a parent or guardian
before class to ensure the login will not be lost.
Since the students will be making their own original pieces and publishing them on the internet, the
teacher will have to send out an email to the students’ parents asking for permission and discussing the
activity prior to it happening. They will also have to understand why doing this will support the students’ and
their learning of writing. The teacher will need to encourage the parents to access their children’s work when
it is online, so they are not only involved in the class, but also keeping an eye on what their child is doing.
Since the students can access this at home, it is important that the parents play an active role is keeping their
children safe.

What technologies would be required to implement this proposed learning activity in a classroom? The
students would all need either a tablet or computer to connect to the internet.

Describe how the following features are addressed in this learning experience (note: all of them may not be
addressed in the project, but most should be if you are reaching a high LoTi Level).
a. Collaboration with peers, near-peers, mentors outside their classroom and often beyond their
school: There isn’t really collaboration while writing individual pieces. While students do not write
pieces together, they can still interact online and read each other’s pieces and respond to them.
b. Student-centered learning and knowledge creation (creating original data and or producing original
products as a result of engaging in a project): The lesson is about students creating their own original
work and submitting it to a publishing site. Each student will work individually by writing their own
opinion piece after completing a rough draft on a graphic organizer. After completing that, they will
type their pieces and publish them on KidPub.

c. Higher-order thinking: This assignment helps students by allowing them to think more about the
content that they are learning because they are able to practice it by writing and publishing it. The
assignment has covered all of the taxonomy levels up to creating, so students will get a lot of valuable
learning experience with this assignment.

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 Online Projects, Collaboration Sites and Publishing Opportunities
d. Students publishing their original work to others who will use/care about their product: With this
assignment, students will publish their work on KidPub. Teachers, parents, and peers will be able to
view the pieces. This will not be used for anything else other than reading and grading purposes.

Bloom’s Taxonomy Level(s):

☒ Remembering ☒ Understanding ☒ Applying ☒ Analyzing ☒ Evaluating ☒ Creating

Levels of Technology Integration (LoTi Level

☐ Level 1: Awareness ☐ Level 2: Exploration ☒ Level 3: Infusion ☐ Level 4: Integration
☐ Level 5: Expansion ☐ Level 6: Refinement

Universal Design for Learning (UDL): With this lesson, the teacher supports planning and strategizing
development by having the students plan out their papers using a worksheet and rough draft. Graphic
organizers help the students plan out their ideas and are a great strategy to use when doing things where
students are creating products. The class uses multiple tools for construction and composition by using this
graphic organizer, writing a rough draft on paper, and typing the paper online. The lesson optimizes individual
choice by letting student spick what they will be writing about and what they believe.
Lesson idea implementation and Internet Safety Policies: When working online, there are safety concerns
for our students. Like stated before, teachers must get permission from parents before completing this
lesson. They also must make sure that they are watching students while online to ensure safety. It is
important for us to educate students about internet safety and what information needs to be kept private.

Reflective Practice: This lesson is a great opportunity for students, because they not only get to create
something, but they also get to publish it online for others to see. They can be happy about what they wrote
and see what other people think about their piece. This lesson also lets students have a choice on what to
write about. To extend this lesson, the students could print out their papers and read them out to the class as
a presentation.

Spring 2018_SJB