Teach Lesson Plan: supplemental materials

This lesson will be a two week unit on native and invasive species in Ohio. My goal with this lesson is to help students be more knowledgeable about the environment they live in and how even one species can impact us. The standard i intend to meet is "apply knowledge of science to real-world challenges".

To implement technology into this lesson I will make a Kahoot to do for review before the post assessments. This will be fun and engaging for students while strengthening their memory. 

Kahoot

I will also provide a website for students to look at in class or at home to further their understanding. This could be used as homework, review, or used during guided instruction for extra help. 

invasive species

same website, search for each species

To make the lesson interactive I will use an online spinning wheel during guided instruction to pick which animal we will be studying each class. Using this will hopefully make the subject interesting and exciting to the students. 

online spinner

Teach Lesson Plan

 

ISTE standards

     The ISTE standard that stood out most to me was 2.3 'citizen' which stresses the importance of using technology ethically and constructively. I think it's very important for an educator to guide tech and internet use for students in a way that is actually helpful. Technology and internet use can easily be misleading or even harmful, so I appreciate that this standard provides guidance to educators on how to handle that. 

    In an elementary classroom I would fulfill this standard by informing students on how to choose reputable sources. I will caution them that they cant trust every piece of information that is on the internet. I would inform them of digital footprints and teach them to use the internet responsibly. 

Teach the Teacher

My class's first displayed artwork!

 
This was the artwork my students made in my second-to-last class. Since we're almost done with the semester, I displayed their art in the hallway! I'm very proud of their work and have seen lots of improvement from the students. We drew Mario-inspired video game still lives!

My blog QR code

 I could use QR codes in the classroom to help out subs with videos or links that explains assignments or materials. I think using this QR code, that links to my blog, would be especially useful in meet the teacher nights or parent teacher conferences. 

Ai in the classroom.

 Should AI be used in the classroom? How and to what extent should it be used? 

AI is gaining popularity and is already being used by many students, so I've been thinking about how—and whether—I should incorporate it into a K-3rd-grade classroom. I looked into a couple AI tools to see how they might be used. 

Grammarly- 

    Grammarly is an extension for Chrome that checks grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Over a paywall, it is able to suggest rewritten sentences to make them more concise or clear. But the free version essentially proofreads for grammatical errors. Once a student knows grammar rules, I think this tool would be incredibly helpful for speeding up the writing process or for the final proofreading of a paper. However, in a K-3rd-grade classroom, where the goal would be for the students to understand and use grammar, a tool that simply fixed mistakes would not be beneficial. It could be cool to use Grammarly after teaching and practicing a grammar lesson as some kind of game. You could put Grammarly on the board and insert student sentences to check for mistakes; that way, the students would already have gotten hands-on experience before being exposed to AI tools. 

Khanmigo-

    Khanmigo is built into Khan Academy as an AI tutor. It has various options for tutoring in different subjects. And leads the student to the answer by asking questions. It is built to not just give out answers but to help students grow in their understanding. I appreciate that this AI seems to be made specifically for learning. This could be a useful tool in the classroom as long as it doesn't replace teacher instruction or hands-on learning. Since it is a tutor of sorts, that would be the best use for it. Khanmigo could provide extra assistance when students are outside the classroom, but the majority of instruction should come from the teacher. 

AI could be very useful, but students are using it more and more, and the worry is that if they use it too much they would become dependent and not actually learn the material. Keeping class attention would also be difficult, minimizing the teacher's role. Why would students listen if AI can do their homework? 

To prevent this, we should teach students that AI should only be used to revise or help with already completed work.  AI is out there, and students have access to it already, so teaching students to use it responsibly will become necessary. 

Reflection:

 When researching AI resources I tried to look for ones that were specialized for a specific subject rather than something like Gemini, which has access to anything on Google. I think the only AI that should be used in class are ones that are education-focused, that way they are more reliable and don't just give answers. I could see myself using both Grammarly and Khanmigo in class. I actually really liked Khanmigo; it is programmed to not be misused as AI often is. I think this would be a great resource for kids who might not be able to afford a tutor. 

I confirm that this post was written by me without using AI-generated text. Any AI tools used were for research, brainstorming, or editing assistance only.