2.  Content Area and Pedagogical Knowledge

This lesson plan was created as the beginning of a research project on Rainforests and deforestation. I provided a variety of articles on deforestation, and I created a Google Slides for students to make a poster as the final product. The research project started February 27th, 2023. 

This lesson plan is important because the students are first asked to read and annotate an informational article, a skill that the students needed to learn. I determined the best "teaching resources and materials for appropriateness as related to curricular content and each student’s needs" by considering the students' reading level (2I). Later in the Unit, students use the provided Google slides to make their own poster on deforestation, using their annotations and research.  

This Unit is important to me because I am very proud at how I created the Google slides, provided articles that were at the students' reading level, and taught the students the valuable skill of Researching and writing. Through this unit, I learned that students should be allowed to independently find supporting details for their research. Students will learn how to annotate and research a topic, if you allow them to practice on their own.  It is good to provide the materials, but the students should get the opportunity to practice what they learned. Otherwise, you don't know what they have learned. In my future classroom, I plan on using the "I do, we do, you do" strategy because it allows me to model how to do an activity, the class to work together and the students to work independently.  

I lead the class in a Read Aloud of "Sometimes a Dream Needs a Push" by Walter Dean Myers. I found this story on Common Lit, the reading level was higher, but we discussed it and read it as a class. After reading, I modeled how to determine character traits and write a character analysis. I made this presentation to help guide the students in their Essay writing. I shared it with all my students, so they had thier own copy to work on. 

This lesson is important because students need to learn how to look for character traits and write an essay on character analysis. Through this lesson, I created a tool with "technology to support instruction and enhance student learning" by building "student skills in the application of technology appropriate to the disciplines" (2L).  

I learned that modifying a lesson and the instructions for a writing Unit is important and challenging at first. Students need you to break the Unit into parts, such as introduction, body and conclusion paragraphs. Even starting with writing ideas down, so it is easier to connect thoughts.  It was a fun to make this presentation and I am so proud of how far my students had come from writing simple sentences to writing paragraphs!