Padlet Unit Plan

Padet Unit Plan

For my unit plan, I chose to review informational texts because they are not only a central part of the NJ Common Core Standards for Language Arts Literacy, but they are also a key part in any kind of future research that a student will need to perform. I tried to construct unit goals that were aimed at answering the essential questions I created for this unit, and the essential questions were formulated by going over the Common Core Standards and understanding what key skills a student should learn in the grade level that I chose. I would like to teach middle school in the future, and my most recent subbing job prior to the start of this project was for a 7th grade teacher, so I had this particular age group fresh in my mind.

The majority of the lessons that I cited in my Padlet are from the ReadWriteThink site by NCTE. This was one of the sites I used to conduct research on lesson plans from Interactivity #3, and it proved to be extremely helpful here as well because the site comes equipped with recommended technologies, websites, and outside research ideas for students. This made it extremely easy for me to find technologies that were student-friendly and creative ways to include them in the lessons. I specifically chose the resources and technologies I did for their ease of use and navigation, and their seamless integration into the lessons.

Adapt Content: Book Creator

Book Creator is a simple, easy to use app that allows you to create your own book, and now with a recent update comic book as well! You can choose for different book shapes, upload your own photos or videos to embed in your book, and show tons of creativity by changing font sizes, colors, types, and all sorts of backgrounds. For my future classroom, students could use Book Creator as a medium for a large project. For example, the assignment could be to choose an independent novel that the student has read and relate it to any of the books read in class up to that point in the year. The students could then use Book Creator to write up their assignment and provide visuals of the two book covers, images of what they think the characters look like, and they can even take advantage of a double page spread to do comparisons! My students could then use platforms like Evernote (which I reviewed previously), to share their books with myself and their classmates.

While this app is free to download, you only get to create one book for free. In-app purchases allow you to upgrade to be able to create more books.

Due to previous criticism about its incompatibility with any platforms other than iOS devices, Book Creator is now also available as an app for Android and Windows devices, meaning it is easier for everyone to have access to this app. The only drawback I see is the sharing capabilities because it requires you to share over another platform which could cause confusion and higher risk for technology to go wrong.

(video presentation of how Book Creator works)

Supporting Instruction with Technology

While searching for lesson plans to use for this assignment I was looking to see if there was anything that resembled an activity that I had previously done in school myself that I enjoyed, or if there was anything that was highly student-centered. This lesson plan fit both of those. I actually remember doing a similar task in middle school, and I liked that it was heavily involved with student-on-student discussion because I feel that, especially for English, less teacher involvement is the best way for kids to share ideas. However, this lesson plan didn't include much use for technology, and was so student-based that I had to add a bit so that the teacher could provide some background knowledge.

I think mindmeister was an incredible tool! Especially for English Language Arts, students could use these maps to organize their ideas and thoughts when drafting papers, or throughout the reading of a novel to organize characters and themes as they arise. The website was incredibly easy to navigate as well, incorporating keyboard functions that eliminated the need to click on common functions, such as pressing "TAB" or "ENTER" to add a new level as opposed to having to click. The only downside for me was in regards to design, it had very few options and lacked bright colors that would have better captured students' attention.