Description, Implementation and Reflection of Lesson Plan Ann Magid-Beale (Blaauw) The goal of my lesson plan was to teach

students the roles and functions of the three branches of American government. There were a number of steps in this plan, including watching a video, reading about the three branches, completing a graphic organizer, and creating two online visuals: a Popplet planning visual, and a Glogster presentation. The final authentic assessment activity was for my students to teach their lessons to students in a middle school social studies classroom. The main adjustment to my plan that I made after creating my original draft in Module 5 was to give more structure to students Glogs. As we read about attention and focus abilities during cognitive development, I identified this portion of my lesson as the weakest point when it came to that. So I decided to make one minor change, which was to provide a more specific rubric of expectations for the Glogs. Because the academic school year was over by the time I was ready to teach my lesson, I had to look elsewhere for my students. I turned to my father and husband, deciding they were a pretty good mix of abilities and knowledge to represent an adequate range. My husband, while extremely adept with technology, openly admits to remembering very little about the form and function of American government. And my father, at nearly eighty, is on the opposite end of technology abilities, having really only used computers for email, internet browsing and Microsoft Word. On the other hand, he was a lawyer and a judge, and is very knowledgeable about the functions of the three branches of government. The lesson implementation itself was interesting. While my husband (predictably) struggled with the more conceptual aspects of the lesson but excelled in the technology, my father was the opposite. He barely had to skim the academic aspects of the lesson, such as the reading and graphic organizer, but struggled much more with putting his understanding into the required formats of Popplet and Glogster. Thus, for my husband, the constraints of the lesson were in the reading materials and more conceptual topics, and the technology was an affordance for him to express himself, as he is much more of a visual learner. For my father on the other hand, technology was a huge constraint, costing him quite a bit of time, effort, and frustration.

Reflection The learning goals of my lesson were twofold: for students to understand the three branches of government, and to demonstrate their understanding by creating their own lesson to teach to younger students. This lesson was designed to enhance a foundational concept of government class. The added technology element allowed students to be more creative in their representations, but as I mentioned above, they also left room for confusion. My dad struggled with the technological requirements of my lesson, but in an ideal situation, with a class of teenagers, I am not likely to run into several of the same issues that he had. Additionally, I would have already had the time to teach Popplet and Glogster to my students, thus eliminating that time from the lesson. In order for this lesson to be a success, students really need to understand how to use the technology beforehand. If I can assume from experience that students already know how to use the technology, I can put much more of my attention on the learning goals, instead of mainly troubleshooting issues that arise from the programs being used. As I was working with my family on this lesson, another constraint I came across was in the planning of the Glogs themselves. I was able to easily keep track of my students in this lesson, as there were only two of them. However, in a bigger class, I could see it being a real struggle to keep up with all students Glogs, making sure they were accurate and fit the expectations adequately as they were working. I clearly had differences in my learners abilities, but because it was such a small sample group, I was able to give each person the attention they needed to support and scaffold for them. Constructivism played a major role in my activities, as I mentioned in my original lesson plan. I did not want my learners to simply write and repeat what I had taught themI wanted them to develop several different ways of expressing their knowledge (graphic organizers, a Popplet and a Glog). My reason for this was my belief that students learn more effectively and are more engaged when they are the ones in charge of their own learning. An affordance of the technological aspect of these activities is that they are more engaging than paper and pencil or PowerPoint, and also are more permanentstudents can access the information they create online at any time. Additionally, the creation of their Glogs for teaching others allowed my students to think more about their own thinking, or make it visible, as Collins, Brown and Holum suggest.

As my students worked on their presentations, it was interesting to see how they chose to use the various features. My husband, who is very visual, created a much more engaging Popplet and Glog than my dad. My husbands reaction was one of pleasureyes he had to learn some boring material, but he got to have a fun time creating visuals designed for middle schoolers. He was inspired by the aesthetic opportunities offered by the assignment. Many of his questions revolved around the content, and whether he was presenting it correctly. He also was curious if he was doing a good job presenting his material in a kid-friendly way. My dad, on the other hand, got easily hung up in the details of the technology, and would have much preferred to work with pencil and paper. His questions mainly revolved around trouble-shooting technology issues. Ultimately, both my father and my husband agreed that using the technology was a more engaging way of learning and expressing their understanding, though with some recognizable constraints. They both also agreed that knowing there was a possible audience made the project more meaningful and made them feel more accountable for their product. Through my frequent check-ins at each stage of the project, I was able to assess their understanding, so that their final products did reflect authentic understanding.