Lesson Plan for Implementing

NETSS
(More Directed Learning Activities)
Teacher(s)
Name

Suzette Powell, Classroom teachers at our school

Position

Technology Instructor/Classroom Teachers

School/District

Huntley Hills Elementary/Dekalb County Schools

E-mail

Spowel65@students.kennesaw.edu

Phone

678-357-3872

Grade Level(s)

Content Area

Language Arts

Time line

12 weeks +

Standards (What do you want students to know and be able to do? What knowledge, skills, and strategies do you
expect students to gain? Are there connections to other curriculum areas and subject area benchmarks? ) Please
put a summary of the standards you will be addressing rather than abbreviations and numbers that indicate which
standards were addressed.
Write narratives in which students recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of
events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to
signal event order, and provide a sense of closure.
With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of tools to produce and publish
writing, including digital tools and collaboration with peers.
Participate in shared research and writing projects.
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation,
and spelling when writing.
Content Standards

NETS*S Standards:

ISTE 2a Interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety
of digital environments and media.
ISTE2b Communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a
variety of media and formats.
ISET2d Contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.

Overview (a short summary of the lesson or unit including assignment or expected or possible products)
Last summer, I established a connection with Jesus Larios Alberto in La Campa, Honduras. The children in his
English class have very few resources for learning English and he has very few resources for teaching them. Our
students will learn about the Honduran class and the difficulties they experience due to lack of materials. This
group of students is particularly sensitive to the needs of others and showing them this situation will engender
quite a bit of compassion. Then, they will develop reading materials and resources to help English Language
Learners in Honduras to learn English. The resources that they create must be durable, lightweight, and address
the needs of English Language Learners. Acceptable products include booklets, posters, games, and re-useable
worksheets, among many other possibilities. During the unit, they will interact with the students of Honduras via
email (internet access is very limited in the area of Honduras where Mr. Alberto is) and blog with adult English
Language Learners in America to develop their ideas. They will need to present their materials to fifth grade
students who will critique on the appeal to older students.
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Essential Questions (What essential question or learning are you addressing? What would students care or
want to know about the topic? What are some questions to get students thinking about the topic or generate
interest about the topic? Additionally, what questions can you ask students to help them focus on important
aspects of the topic? (Guiding questions) What background or prior knowledge will you expect students to bring
to this topic and build on?) Remember, essential questions are meant to guide the lesson by provoking inquiry.
They should not be answered with a simple yes or no and should have many acceptable answers.
What resources do students need to learn English?
What resources do teachers need to teach English?
How are books made?
How is our school alike/different from the Honduran school?
What materials are the best for making reading materials and resources that will last in the Honduran climate?
What topics are interesting for students in Honduras to read?
How can I write so that a beginning English student will understand?
How can we use the knowledge of our own English Language Learners to help us understand the needs of
Honduran students?
Assessment (What will students do or produce to illustrate their learning? What can students do to generate new
knowledge? How will you assess how students are progressing (formative assessment)? How will you assess
what they produce or do? How will you differentiate products?) You must attach copies of your assessment and/or
rubrics. Include these in your presentation as well.
Students will create a learning resource that includes text and pictures. They will access information from email
and blog to design their resource. Their blogging will be assessed via rubric (see below) once per week, with
feedback given for improvement. Their final product will be assessed using a portfolio (see checklist for portfolio
and portfolio rubric). Products are differentiated by what each group selects.

Resources (How does technology support student learning? What digital tools, and resourcesonline student
tools, research sites, student handouts, tools, tutorials, templates, assessment rubrics, etc.help elucidate or
explain the content or allow students to interact with the content? What previous technology skills should students
have to complete this project?)
Technology supports student learning as it provides both a vehicle for communication and a means of production
for an authentic learning task. Technology will be available throughout the day for students to work on this task,
ensuring that the Level of Technology Integration remains high. Students previous technology skills will need to
include understanding how to open the internet and productivity tools. I will need to teach them how to open
documents in the cloud and share them with others. Students will have access to pictures of the Honduran
classroom and email to communicate with me about their needs. Students will need access to Kidblog accounts
for blogging about their ideas, Office 365 access (for MS Word, collaborative space, and Cloud storage), MS
Publisher (if they choose to generate a poster), Internet access, Story Jumper (if they choose to generate a book),
and MS Paint (for creating digital pictures/illustrations). Specific instruction on various aspects of Story Jumper,
Word, Publisher, and Paint will depend on what each group choose as their digital tools and what product they
choose to create. Therefore, instruction for these tools will be on an as needed basis and in small groups.
Color printing is not available, so students may design coloring pages for printing and coloring.

Instructional Plan
Preparation (What student needs, interests, and prior learning provide a foundation for this lesson? How can
you find out if students have this foundation? What difficulties might students have?)

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Prior learning students will need to know basics about stories (beginning, middle, and end), they will also need
to know how to access their email and how to store documents in the cloud. They will need an introduction to MS
Word, Paint, and Publisher if they choose to create their resources using those productivity tools. Typing speed is
not necessary, but an understanding of the keyboard will be very beneficial.
Interests this unit appeals to a wide-range of interests. The compassionate nature of our students engenders a
great deal of interest when they feel that they can be helpful. Students are encouraged to share their lives with
the Honduran class through stories, games, pictures, posters, and other ideas. The materials that they make
should reflect beginning English skills, most of which they have mastered (complete sentences, vocabulary,
simple grammar.) Students will blog with adults who are learning English, which will help them understand the
culture as well as develop the writing skills related to the stories that they wish to create and share.
Needs they will need to be able to maintain momentum once they begin and be able to stay focused on their
project. The checklist will help with that.
Difficulties some students are not English proficient and will need help ensuring that their stories are
grammatically correct. Students who wish to make bilingual resources may have difficulty with one or both
languages. They will need help ensuring that their language use in Spanish is correct. Students are not proficient
in typing and computer use. They will need help navigating to and logging in to Kidblog and accessing their Office
365 accounts. I created videos that they can access to review skills that I have already taught.
Prior to beginning this unit, I will informally observe if students have the following skills: ability to login to an
account, basic familiarity with the keyboard, ability to identify parts of a story, ability to write a complete sentence
with correct beginning capitalization and ending punctuation. I will also group students who are not English
proficient or who have special needs with students who are proficient or advanced proficient in language.

Management Describe the classroom management strategies will you use to manage your students and the use
of digital tools and resources. How and where will your students work? (Small groups, whole group, individuals,
classroom, lab, etc.) What strategies will you use to achieve equitable access to the Internet while completing this
lesson? Describe what technical issues might arise during the Internet lesson and explain how you will resolve or
trouble-shoot them? Please note: Trouble-shooting should occur prior to implementing the lesson as well as
throughout the process. Be sure to indicate how you prepared for problems and work through the issues that
occurred as you implemented and even after the lesson was completed.
Classroom management strategies: students will be given a clipboard and checklist (see below). They will need
to check in with their classroom teacher and me once a week to see that they are completing their requirements.
Students have assigned computers within the lab, so when they come to me, they will all have access. In the lab,
they will get email updates, blogs, discuss concerns, and share ideas. The lab setting is a co-taught class,
providing students with additional support. English Language Learners have a resource in their ESOL teacher.
Our Spanish teacher will include suggested ideas once per week when the classes attend Spanish.
In the classroom, there are 3 workstations, 5 iPads, and NEO devices (these allow students to type and send the
typing to the printer). Students groups will be assigned a time during language arts when they are to work on their
materials. They will check in with their classroom teacher for feedback, supplies needed, and problem solving
(homeroom teachers will share with me any problems I need to address). To provide equitable access, students
who need additional time will be directed to attend homework help in the computer lab in the mornings (this is
additional access time our school provides for all children for 30 minutes daily). Technical issues that might arise
include login issues (I will have index cards with students login in formation available at each workstation) and
difficulty locating resources (I will curate resources on the Symbaloo which is bookmarked and I will train a
student helper in each group to help students locate the bookmark.) (NOTE: since I am the technology
instructor/trouble shooter at my school, I anticipate that I will be able to handle any difficulties as they arise during
my planning time.)

Instructional Strategies and Learning Activities Describe the research-based instructional strategies you will
use with this lesson. How will your learning environment support these activities? What is your role? What are the
students' roles in the lesson? How can you ensure higher order thinking at the analysis, evaluation, or
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creativity levels of Blooms Taxonomy? How can the technology support your teaching? What authentic,
relevant, and meaningful learning activities and tasks will your students complete? How will they build knowledge
and skills? How will students use digital tools and resources to communicate and collaborate with each other
and others? How will you facilitate the collaboration?
Technology teacher My role is to facilitate student access to the technology (including Office 365 and
Word/Publisher/Paint/Kidblog), serve as liaison with Mr. Alberto and Ann Willingham of the adult English
Language class, and set up/maintain Kidblog. I will provide guidance on collaboration in the cloud and any
technology solutions if there are problems in the classroom. When needed, I will provide instruction to small
groups on specific productivity tools. I also will provide assistance for students during morning help and train the
technology assistants who will help the students in their team to locate the resources that I have curated on
Symbaloo. For closing, I will provide the share-out time with the fifth grade and rubric scoring for the blog posts
and comments.
Classroom teacher Their role is to facilitate the project by allowing time for the students to blog, comment, write,
and work on projects during writers workshop. They will also provide standard, grade level lessons that will allow
students to correct most errors. They will complete the rubric for the final portfolio and assign the final grade. (In
my district, technology is a pass/fail class therefore I cannot assign grades.)
Students students become authors of the resources and investigators of what makes a good resource. They
will use the engineering design process to design learning resources for the students in Honduras. They will need
to develop skills in using Kidblog, conducting internet research, using MS Word/Publisher/Paint, sharing
documents to the cloud and with their team. Students are expected to collaborate with their group as a
cooperative learning group. They will receive feedback once a week from teachers and are expected to address
any concerns from teacher feedback. Peer feedback may be brought up to the teacher as well and, if
appropriate, may be acted on by the student(s). Students are expected to analyze the make-up of teaching
resources (books/posters/games and so forth) and to design a resource that is light-weight, weather resistant, and
appropriate for beginning English language learners. They will need to understand their audience and choose
the most effective way to engage them in learning about English. They are expected to use Kidblog, productivity
tools of their choice (Word/Publisher/Paint), and collaborate by sharing within their Office 365 accounts.

Differentiation (How will you differentiate content and process to accommodate various learning styles and
abilities? How will you help students learn independently and with others? How will you provide extensions and
opportunities for enrichment? What assistive technologies will you need to provide?)
Content differentiation for students with disabilities or limited English proficiency - their final product may be a
vocabulary book or story with one word in each language or just one English word to describe the picture. Gifted
students will be required to word process the entire resource and include sentence structures beyond simple
sentences to challenge the Honduran children. They might also choose a more difficult resource, such as a game
or puzzle.
Process differentiation for students with disabilities or limited English proficiency fewer blog posts and
comments will be required. For gifted students, more blog posts and comments will be required.
Extensions students who finish early or who are in need of additional challenge may work on additional
materials as time permits, they can also work on making their resource completely bilingual.
Reflection (Will there be a closing event? Will students be asked to reflect upon their work? Will students be
asked to provide feedback on the assignment itself? What will be your process for answering the following
questions?
Did students find the lesson meaningful and worth completing?
In what ways was this lesson effective?
What went well and why?
What did not go well and why?
How would you teach this lesson differently?)

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Closing Event Students will present their final products to the fifth grade students. They will gather information
from the fifth grade about what they like and what they would suggest for improvements. Students will meet with
me in their small groups and tell me what they liked about this project and what they would like to have done
differently. They will also reflect on the experience and place that reflection in their portfolio. The products will be
collected and taken to Honduras next June when I return. I will video tape the presentation and the students
using the resources and bring the video back to share with the students in August.
Process for answering questions: I will meet with the small groups and again with the whole class to share out
the successes and challenges. I do want students to provide me with feedback to improve the project, but I
recognize that many may not have the skills to do so.
Closure: Anything else you would like to reflect upon regarding lessons learned and/or your experience with
implementing this lesson. What advice would you give others if they were to implement the lesson? Please
provide a quality reflection on your experience with this lesson and its implementation.
This unit went well in many respects. It provided an authentic experience and audience for the student work and
generated a lot of interest in the products. The students enjoyed creating their products (mostly books) and
enjoyed being able to get creative. One thing that did NOT go well was that I was handed a competing STEM
activity which needed a lot of the technology class time to complete. This threw our time table completely off so
that we werent able to finish on time. This wasnt too much of a problem since I cannot take their work to
Honduras until next June anyway. My advice for teachers who decide to implement a lesson of this caliber is to
plan a LOT of time, more so than you think you will need, and have back up plans for when things dont
coordinate well. As we were implementing, we kept running up against restrictions that interfered with my
classes, including testing, STEM visits, and a problem involving all the schools iPads. It also takes time to teach
the small groups their various lessons and meet with them to check their progress. I ended up having to use my
planning time multiple days to get this done. Effective communication with the homeroom teachers was a must
as well. One of the homeroom teachers didnt want the students to blog in her classroom, while the others did. I
found out later that she misunderstood the planning process and was using her writing time to meet other, schoolrequired, writing assignments. We ended up moving the blogging into reading time, but then some students who
receive EIP services, werent in the room. Some students were able to make it to morning help, but they would
forget or would come so late that they couldnt do anything (our computers are over 8 years old and are very slow
to boot/login).
Next pages contain rubrics and checklists.

Page 5 of 8

Clipboard Checklist
Directions: Put a check mark () or X when you have finished that step.
1. ____ I know my team. My team members are _________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

____ I know how to log in to KidBlog. My password is: __________________.

____ I know what I have to do to be successful on this project.
____ I have written my first post.
____ I have written my first comment.
____ My team knows what product we will make. We are making a
___________________.
7. ____ My team knows what each person is doing. We will write each persons name and
what they are doing in the box below.

8. ____ I have written my second post.

9. ____ I have written my second comment.
10. ____ Our team has completed the ASK part of our project. I wrote my questions in the
box below.

11. ____ Our team has completed the IMAGINE part of our project. Here is a picture of
what we imagine the final product will look like.

12. ____ I have written my third post.

13. ____ I have written my third comment.
14. ____ Our team has completed the PLAN part of our project. The plan is under this
page on the clipboard.
15. ____ I have written my fourth post.
16. ____ I have written my fourth comment.
17. ____ Our team has completed the CREATE part of our project.
18. ____ Our team has shown the CREATE part to Ms. Powell.
19. ____ I have written my third post.
20. ____ I have written my third comment.
21. ____ Our team has completed the IMPROVE part of our project.
22. ____ I wrote a reflective comment about the project.
23. ____ I wrote at least one comment to a reflection post.
24. ____ Our team has finished our project.
Page 6 of 8

BlogPost&CommentRubric
Student Name:

________________________________________

CATEGORY
Content

4
Mywritingison topic
and staysfocused.

3
Mywritingmostlystays
on topic and focus.

2
1
I got off topic or I lost my Mywritingiscompletely
focus.
off topic and unfocused.

Post Structure

Mypostsreallyget
readersto think and
respond.

Mypostsget some
readers to think and
respond.

Mypostsonlyask
readersto give short
answer responses.

Mypostsonlyask for
readers to answer yes
and no or not respond at
all.

Post Frequency

I post more than twice

per week

I post twice per week.

I post once per week,

I do not post at least

once per week.

Comment
Frequency

I comment more than

twice per week

I comment twice per

week.

I comment once per

week

I do not comment at least

once per week.

Most of the time I tell

what part of the design
processI amin.
I nearlyalwaysuse
correct capitalization,
punctuation and spelling;
I misspell afew easier
words.

Once in awhile I tell what I never mention what

part of the design
part of the design
processI amin.
processI amin.
I sometimesuse correct Mymistakesin
capitalization,
capitalization,
punctuation and spelling. punctuation and spelling
Mymistakesmake it hard make it difficult to
for othersto read my
understand what I am
writing.
tryingto say.

Link to Engineering I alwaystell what part of

Design Process
the design processI am
in.
CAPS
I alwaysuse correct
capitalization,
punctuation, and spelling
for grade level words.
Mymisspellingsare on
harder words.

Portfolio Checklist
Student Name:
Check here
when done
1
2
3
4
5
6

My portfolio includes the clipboard

checklist.
My portfolio includes all my rough drafts.
My portolio includes my final reflection.
My portfolio includes at least one copy of a
Kidblog post that I wrote.
My portfolio includes at least one copy of a
Kidblog comment that I wrote.
I believe that I have done my best on this
project.

Page 7 of 8

TeachingResourceFinal PortfolioRubric
StudentsNames:

_________________________________________________________________

CATEGORY
Writing

4
There isan abundanct
evidence to support that
the student engaged in
the writingprocessto a
high degree.

3
There issufficienct
evidence to support that
the student engaged in
the writingprocess to an
acceptable degree.

2
There isinsufficienct
evidence to support that
the student engaged in
the writingprocessto an
acceptable degree.

1
There is no evidence to
support that the student
engaged in the writing
processto an acceptable
degree.

Collaboration

The student contributed

to the overall success of
the teamand worked
consistentlyto support
the team.

The student contributed

to the success of the
teamand worked to
support the team.

The student contributed

inconsistentlyto the
success of the team.
Conflicts were difficult to
overcome.

The student did not

contribute to the success
of the eteam. Conflicts
were not overcome.

Digital Tools

The student learned

multiple digital tools and
there is evidence to
suggest manywere used.

The student learned

some digital tools and
there is evidence to
suggest some were used.

The student learned a

few digital tools. There is
evidence to suggest one
was used.

The student did not learn

anydigital toolsOR
learned but did not use
them.

Research

There isample evidence

to support that the
student carefully
researched and thought
out the end product.

There isevidence to
support that the student
researched and thought
out the end product.

There isinsufficienct
evidence to support that
the student researched
and thought out the end
product.

There is no evidence to
support that the student
researched and thought
out the end product.

Conventions

All spelling, capitalizing,

punctuation, and
grammar are correct.
There are veryfew, if
any, mistakes.

Most spelling,
capitalizing, punctuation,
and grammar are correct.
There are afew mistakes,
but you can understand
the writing.

Some spelling,
capitalizing, punctuation,
and grammar is correct.
There are serious
mistakesthat make it
hard to understand the
work.

There are multiple errors

in spelling, capitalizing,
punctuation, or
grammar. Meaningis
compromised.

Contribution

The student contributed The student contributed The student contributed The student contributed
equallyto the project.
some of the time to the most of the time to the verylittle to the project.
project.
project.

Effectiveness

The student
communicated ideas
effectivelyto students
and teachers.

The student sufficiently

communicated ideas to
students and teachers.

Page 8 of 8

The student attempted The student didn't

to communicate ideas to communicate ideas
studentsORteachers but effectivelyat all.
needed considerable
assistance.