After completing the Perfect President activity, we discussed how it fit into all aspects of the design principle ACTS. At that time, I was thinking about what I was currently doing in the classroom that had all the components of a good lesson. What crossed my mind first was a lesson I created to help my students with their Science Research Project.
Authentic Problem: In order for students to produce an acceptable idea for their project, they need to have background knowledge on a subject. It also needs to be something they are interested in, so I task them with reading a current event (on several occasions) in the science field of their choice.
Exit Strategy: They will use the knowledge gained for a project topic.
Clear Outcome: On their own time, students will find and read an article. They will then answer predetermined questions given as a template. During class, students will get in groups and share what they learned with their peers. A few will be selected to share with the class.
Thinking skills: They need to know how to answer the template questions. As a class, we read an article I selected as an example. I showed them how to find the important information in the article and clarified the purpose of each question.
Software: First I taught them how to find current events online and gave them appropriate sites to visit. I also showed them how to access the template online and how to save it so they can manipulate the document.
Very clear application of what we've learned. I like being able to take our ideas back to the classroom!
ReplyDelete