Brooke

Howerton
Online Projects, Collaboration Sites and Publishing Opportunities
Lesson Idea Name: I think this because…
Content Area: Language Arts
Grade Level(s): First Grade
Content Standard Addressed: ELAGSE1W1- Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or the name of the
book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure.

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:
• Publishing site: https://www.kidpub.com/
• In My Opinion Graphic Organizer: 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:
This lesson is focused on writing an opinion piece including their opinion statement, their reasons for that opinion, and
why the audience should have the same opinion. For this lesson, there is a publishing site incorporated into it. After the
students have filled out their graphic organizers and written a rough draft of their opinion pieces, they will type it out and
publish it onto KidPub.com. The teacher will help the students create logins for the website and make sure that everyone is
successful in posting their opinion piece.
Since the students will be creating their own original works and publishing them online, the teacher will send out an
email to the parents and guardians letting them know what they will be doing, why it supports their learning of writing, and
that they will have a specific login in order to post their work. The teacher will also send out another email to each of the
parents sending them a link to the website so that they can access their child’s work when they are done as well. Using
this publishing site is a great experience for students, as they get to feel excited and proud that they’ve created something
that has been published for anyone to read.

What technologies would be required to implement this proposed learning activity in a classroom?
Each student would need a device that can connect to the Internet, such as an iPad, Chrome book, or laptop. The
teacher would help each student login and publish their original work to the website on their device.

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, and mentors outside their classroom and often beyond their
school: There is not really collaboration while working on creating their work, as they do that part individually since
it is opinion-based. Although there isn’t collaboration in or outside of the classroom in this lesson, their peers and
other people will be able to see their original work once it is published to the publishing site.

b. Student-centered learning and knowledge creation (creating original data and or producing original
products as a result of engaging in a project): This lesson is all about the students creating their own original
work and then publishing it to a publishing site. As said above, each student will individually write an opinion piece
after filling out a graphic organizer that will help them gather their thoughts. After writing a rough draft, the
students will type up their papers and then publish them to KidPub. Their peers and parents will get to read their
work once it is published.

c. Higher-order thinking: This assignment help students to think more about the content they are learning because
they are practicing it. There is a pressure to make sure they do an excellent job on their opinion papers and focused
on what they’ve learned about them since they will be publishing them for people to see. This assignment has
covers all of the Bloom’s Taxonomy levels up to creating, so students will get a lot of valuable learning experiences
with this whole assignment.

Spring 2018_SJB
Brooke Howerton
Online Projects, Collaboration Sites and Publishing Opportunities

d. Students publish their original work to others who will use/care about their product: With this
assignment, the students will be publishing their work onto PidPub. The teacher, parents, and others will be able to
view these papers if wanted. Nobody will specifically be using this work for anything, other than the teacher looking
at them to grade them.

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 strategy development by having the students plan out their papers
using a graphic organizer and rough draft. Graphic organizers help the students to plan out their ideas and are a great
strategy to use when doing anything where students are creating a product. The class uses multiple tools for construction
and composition by using a graphic organizer, writing a rough draft on paper, and typing the paper online as different ways
of constructing their papers. The lesson optimizes individual choice and autonomy by letting students pick what they will
write about and what their opinion is. Although the papers will all have the same format, each paper will be different.

Lesson idea implementation and Internet Safety Policies:
When working with the Internet or publishing work online, there may be concerns from parents and/or administrators.
They may be concerned when it comes to students posting information about them online. To avoid this concern, a teacher
can inform administrators and parents about what they are learning/doing and how it supports the students’ learning, refrain
from having students communicating with someone online unless moderated, and educate parents and students about
Internet safety such as not putting their personal information online.

Reflective Practice:
Overall, I feel that this lesson plan is a great opportunity for students, as they get to not only create something, but
they also get to publish it online for people to see. They can be proud of their opinion and what they wrote. This lesson
lets students have a choice in what to write about, where they stand, plan out their points, right out a rough draft, type
out their paper online, and then also publish it online to make it all official. I think students will find this lesson plan fun and
rewarding. To extend this lesson, the students could print out their papers and read them out to the class as a
presentation. I can’t think of other technology tools that would benefit this lesson.

Spring 2018_SJB