The lesson plan I selected was entitled “A Collaboration of Sites and Sounds: Using Wikis to Catalog Protest Songs.” I chose this particular lesson plan because I felt that it was very well constructed and had clear curriculum goals: to teach students the characteristics of a protest song; enable students to identify and analyze the object and means of protest as well as the implicit and explicit meanings of words and phrases; to teach students how to create a wiki. Furthermore, I felt that this lesson plan effectively incorporated technology through the use of wikis and the teaching strategies were well thought out. The main gap I felt was present between the curriculum goals, strategies, and technologies used was that the original lesson did not incorporate teacher-centered strategies often which I felt could impede student learning. In the original lesson, the teacher did not provide students examples of what a sample wiki pertaining to their project would look like and furthermore did not go through a protest song and explicate it collaboratively with their students. I feel that the lack of examples provided in the original lesson by the teacher creates a slight gap between the strategies and the curriculum goals. In addition, I feel that there was a lack of group work in the original lesson and thus students were deprived of an opportunity to receive constructive feedback from one another and that technology was not implemented to aid this feedback process. Overall, I feel that technology is integral to this lesson because it helps students work collaboratively to identify protest song characteristics, aids their research and identification of songs, and allows them to construct a written work, in wiki form, which they can share with their peers as well as others.
Ellen,
ReplyDeleteMy lesson plan was very student centered and lacked group work as well. Those are some aspects I added to the lesson plan as well. But, I do like the idea of starting a lesson with homework first. Such as in your case in letting them analyze the song before you add to it. This allows the teacher to get a good grasp of where the students excel and lack the skills needed to advance in the assignment. When this is done correctly the teacher will know where to focus his/her attention in their instruction.
I also think it's very innovative to have homework done first. This is a great opening because it can build on students' prior knowledge and scaffold their experience. All too often, homework is given as busy work and has no true impact on students' education, which is tragic.
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