Lesson Critique and Standards Alignment

Lesson:  World Wide Weather

 

 

I critiqued a science lesson for grades 3-5 on weather.  In this lesson, the students will use a variety of technology to describe the differences and similarities between different city's weather patterns.

 

 

 

 

TEKS

(1) Foundations.  The student demonstrates knowledge and appropriate use of hardware components, software programs, and their connections.  The student is expected to:

(A) use technology terminology appropriate to the task;

(B) save and delete files, uses menu options and commands, and work with more than one software application

(E)  access remote equipment on a network such as a printer or other peripherals.

(2) Foundations. The student uses data input skills appropriate to the task. The student is expected to:

(A) use a variety of input devices such as mouse, keyboard, disk drive, modem, voice/sound recorder, scanner, digital video, CD-ROM, or touch screen;

(B) use proper keyboarding techniques such as correct hand and body positions and smooth and rhythmic keystroke patterns;

(C) demonstrate touch keyboarding techniques for operating the alphabetic, numeric, punctuation, and symbol keys as grade-level appropriate;

(D) produce documents at the keyboard, proofread, and correct errors;

(E) use language skills including capitalization, punctuation, spelling, word division, and use of numbers and symbols as grade-level appropriate; and

(F) demonstrate an appropriate speed on short timed exercises depending upon the grade level and hours of instruction.

(3) Foundations. The student complies with the laws and examines the issues regarding the use of technology in society. The student is expected to:

(A) follow acceptable use policies when using computers; and

(B) model respect of intellectual property by not illegally copying software or another individual's electronic work.

(4) Information acquisition. The student uses a variety of strategies to acquire information from electronic resources, with appropriate supervision. The student is expected to:

(A) apply appropriate electronic search strategies in the acquisition of information including keyword and Boolean search strategies; and

(B) select appropriate strategies to navigate and access information on local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs), including the Internet and intranet, for research and resource sharing.

(5) Information acquisition. The student acquires electronic information in a variety of formats, with appropriate supervision. The student is expected to:

(A) acquire information including text, audio, video, and graphics.

(6) Information acquisition. The student evaluates the acquired electronic information. The student is expected to:

(A) apply critical analysis to resolve information conflicts and validate information;

(B) determine the success of strategies used to acquire electronic information; and

(C) determine the usefulness and appropriateness of digital information.

(7) Solving problems. The student uses appropriate computer-based productivity tools to create and modify solutions to problems. The student is expected to:

(A) use software programs with audio, video, and graphics to enhance learning experiences;

(B) use appropriate software to express ideas and solve problems including the use of word processing, graphics, databases, spreadsheets, simulations, and multimedia; and

(C) use a variety of data types including text, graphics, digital audio, and video.

(8) Solving problems. The student uses research skills and electronic communication, with appropriate supervision, to create new knowledge. The student is expected to:

(A) use communication tools to participate in group projects;

(9) Solving problems. The student uses technology applications to facilitate evaluation of work, both process and product. The student is expected to:

(B) use software features, such as slide show previews, to evaluate final product.

(10) Communication. The student formats digital information for appropriate and effective communication. The student is expected to:

(A) use font attributes, color, white space, and graphics to ensure that products are appropriate for the defined audience;

(B) use font attributes, color, white space, and graphics to ensure that products are appropriate for the communication media including multimedia screen displays, Internet documents, and printed materials; and

(C) use appropriate applications including, but not limited to, spreadsheets and databases to develop charts and graphs by using data from various sources.

(11) Communication. The student delivers the product electronically in a variety of media, with appropriate supervision. The student is expected to:

(A) publish information in a variety of media including, but not limited to, printed copy, monitor display, Internet documents, and video; and

(B) use presentation software to communicate with specific audiences.

 

 

 

 

Lesson Critique:

This lesson plan is based upon the differences of weather patterns between various cities.  The lesson will evolve over a four week period to allow for data collection.  This lesson plan is enhanced by the technology which is involved.  With the class, the teacher establishes the guidelines of the project.  Two graphs are to be created for precipitation and temperature highs and lows.  A description of typical weather for the current season will also be developed.  The students will be divided up into teams.  Each team will be assigned a different city.  Each team will have a weather reporter, multimedia gatherer and chart producer.  Each day, the weather reporter and chart producer will access the internet to research their designated city's highs and lows, along with wind speed and amount of precipitation.  A great website that can be used is www.weather.com.  This website is very easy to maneuver.  The students can type in their designated cities and all information about the various city's weather comes right up.  This lesson does not suggest a program to use for designing the two graphs.  A nice program to use for this task is Microsoft Excel.  The chart producer could use this program to design the graphs to show precipitation and the temperature's highs and lows. The multimedia gatherer will research the internet for photographs, movies and weather maps for the city.  This student will save his/her findings in a folder on the computer or on a disk.  I suggest having the student print any photographs and/or weather maps of his/her particular city to include in the finished project.  The students could also compare their findings for each city from one week to the next.  Once the four weeks have ended, each team will reach conclusions about the weather patterns for the month.  They will then construct multimedia presentations that include the findings on the weather patterns for their selected cities and the effects of the weather for that month.  A good program each team could use to present their city's weather pattern findings is Microsoft PowerPoint.  The teams could present the facts about each city's weather, using a variety of clipart to demonstrate different weather patterns.  The lesson calls for each student to write a paragraph describing the differences and similarities they see between each city's weather.   This lesson could further be enhanced by having the students use Microsoft Word to input their research findings into paragraph form.  This lesson is enhanced by the technology which is involved.  Further, students learn to work together in teams to develop ideas and collect data to develop research findings.  I think this is a great lesson for group collaboration and furthering the students' technology skills. 

 

Lesson Plan

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