WEBSITE AND CLASSROOM BLOG CREATION TOOLS

Name: Lexie Fuhrman

Grade Level: 5th
Content Area: Science
Technology Used (check all that apply):
X Blog Wiki Other Website Creation Tool (list): Edublogs.com
Content Area/Grade/Standards/Topics Addressed:
S5L1. Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information to group organisms using scientific
classification procedures.

a. Develop a model that illustrates how animals are sorted into groups (vertebrate and invertebrate)
and how vertebrates are sorted into groups (fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal) using data
from multiple sources.

Brief Description of Learning Experience:

Teacher will show students introduction video (located under the multimedia video page on class weebly)
and begin a discussion about modern classification. Students will work in groups of 3 to complete guided
assignments posted under the Assignments page of the EduBlog listed above. The guided assignments
should take no longer than one class period to complete.

Once groups have finished their guided assignments, they will choose a BrainPop video on one of the 6
kingdoms of classification and create a page on the class EduBlog to inform other groups about their
kingdom. Information from each page will be used to create a class exam for the unit on classification.
Students will be creating their own questions for the exam by reviewing their BrainPop video and choosing
information they think is important for others to know.

After all of the pages are finished and published, students can show their parents their ongoing page of
subjects in science. This way parents are also up to date on what students are learning during the school
day.

Blooms Level of Critical Thinking Required (check all that apply):

See http://epltt.coe.uga.edu/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy
Remembering Understanding Applying Analyzing X Evaluating X Creating

Student Engagement/Level of Technology Implementation (LoTi): This lesson encourages students to

take responsibility for their learning by researching their own topics and deciding which information is
important to share with others in their class. They are also publishing their research on a web blog which is
public and can be viewed by anyone. Since they are working in collaboration with other students, the LoTi
level is a 4.

Importance of technology: Creating their own web page is self-motivating to students they are creating
something that will be viewable by a wide audience and therefore they must take extra care and
responsibility in the creation of that page. Part of the scientific method used by real scientists includes
publishing your research for peer review. Students will get to experience what real scientists do when they
publish their findings for fellow scientists to review and evaluate. Students get a real world application by
publishing their research for peer review (in this case their classmates). That level of personal responsibility

1
 WEBSITE AND CLASSROOM BLOG CREATION TOOLS
may not be achieved if the students were only sharing their findings with their classmates.

Internet Safety and Student Privacy: Since the pages will be publicly viewed, we will take extra
precaution to ensure students remain anonymous. All of the projects published on the class EduBlog are
viewable only - no comments or discussion posts are allowed. Students are creating pages that neither
require or need private information such as age, grade, name, or address in order to be published.

Describe your personal learning goal for this activity. What are you trying that you have not tried
before? What do you hope to learn from this activity? How do you hope it will help students learn?
Instead of just going from science unit to science unit with no real world application, I am creating an
environment in which students feel they are in control of their learning. My hopes are that students will
achieve a sense of accomplishment and personal motivation by including their thoughts and opinions in the
flow of the lesson itself. Creating a class exam (which will count for the unit test grade!) by including
student input will hopefully help as well.