Mrs. Krause asked if I knew of a technology tool for helping with a review activity for AP Psychology. After some thinking, I realized the interactive part of the SMARTboard would be a perfect fit for a "first person to touch an object would get to answer the question" activity.
While the classroom teacher developed the questions, I created a file that would allow different animal sounds to be made when a student touched the SMARTboard. If the sounds did not work, a "flipper" slide was created.
Even high school students were "into it" by trying to be the first to touch the board and answer the questions! As Mrs. Krause stated, "It was a fun way to start class!"
I really dislike that learning somewhat ends when the bell rings. This does not happen in real life. Today, the students needed to use a proportion to solve a "tag and capture" problem. The main goal was to have the students determine the process and MORE IMPORTANTLY reflect through blogging the challenges and successes of the day.
Many students struggled with the concept and organizing the data. This was frustrating as we have been working through the concept for three days. However, the most frustrating thing about the day was not being able to bring closure to the activity. Because of the frustrations, an ideal learning opportunity would have been for students to reflect and learn from others reflections as well.
Tomorrow, we will need to wrap up the lesson with a reflection.
What I Could Have Done Better:
I could have established a time for a follow up on our blog or twitter for this evening.
Instead of a long blog post, I could have had them tweet a quick reflection followed by a more detailed blog post tomorrow.
I should have broken the lesson down into two days at the start.
Items I Liked From The Lesson:
I like problems that don't give the students much direction. I larger question steers them in the direction they need to go. My question: "How many tadpoles in their pond (bag)?"
I liked the opportunity to show them the YouTube clip of an actual person in the woods collecting data. This I thought gave a great visual relationship to the simulation in our book.
The whiteboard groups continue to provide small positive learning environments
