ROBOT MAIN IDEA LESSON PLAN
Not only does it make the most sense to keep in mind that different students learn differently and therefore need to be taught differently, but it also makes the lessons more fun and long-lasting for your students. The multi-sensory approach to teaching, which involves incorporating more than one of the senses (for example kinesthetic, tactic, audio and visual all in the same lesson), helps ALL students retain material. This works because all students have certain learning styles that they are more inclined to.
Though I personally love incorporating action and touch into my lesson plans, the value of audio and visual learning is not lost on me. Especially when working with younger students, I find it important that different learning and teaching styles are used regularly. (This was something evident in my butterfly lesson plan in which the students had to physically stand and act out the life cycle phases).
There are some other instructional methods and strategies that I find particularly helpful, too. Working together for cooperative learning or even having big group style conversations/debates are one of my favorites. In addition, I enjoy implementing anything where the students get to take ownership for their incredible thoughts and ideas. One example is the Robot Lesson Plan that I did this past semester.
Our class was learning about how to find the main idea in an article or a story. We used the "palm" method many times (where the students look at and touch their own palm--- the main idea part--- or fingers--- the supporting details), but my students were ready for something new. I brought in a student-geared article about the space rover Curiosity and we read as a group about how scientists sent the rover to Mars to look for signs of life. My students loved the material but were more interested in the huge, aluminum space creature I'd brought in for today's lesson.
I explained to the students that this space creature can help us find the main idea of the article too, if we think of his body as the main idea and his arms/legs/head as the supporting details. They really grasped the idea that the body cannot be held up without the arms and legs (supporting details). One by one the students helped me fill out the main idea and details on the robot (on post-it notes). On each note, they also marked their name so that we could remember who provided that information. This interactive lesson was a huge hit and appealed to all of the different learning styles in my classroom (hearing the material read, seeing the material as we read it, passing the robot around, getting up and posting things on the robot, having a group discussion).
Though I personally love incorporating action and touch into my lesson plans, the value of audio and visual learning is not lost on me. Especially when working with younger students, I find it important that different learning and teaching styles are used regularly. (This was something evident in my butterfly lesson plan in which the students had to physically stand and act out the life cycle phases).
There are some other instructional methods and strategies that I find particularly helpful, too. Working together for cooperative learning or even having big group style conversations/debates are one of my favorites. In addition, I enjoy implementing anything where the students get to take ownership for their incredible thoughts and ideas. One example is the Robot Lesson Plan that I did this past semester.
Our class was learning about how to find the main idea in an article or a story. We used the "palm" method many times (where the students look at and touch their own palm--- the main idea part--- or fingers--- the supporting details), but my students were ready for something new. I brought in a student-geared article about the space rover Curiosity and we read as a group about how scientists sent the rover to Mars to look for signs of life. My students loved the material but were more interested in the huge, aluminum space creature I'd brought in for today's lesson.
I explained to the students that this space creature can help us find the main idea of the article too, if we think of his body as the main idea and his arms/legs/head as the supporting details. They really grasped the idea that the body cannot be held up without the arms and legs (supporting details). One by one the students helped me fill out the main idea and details on the robot (on post-it notes). On each note, they also marked their name so that we could remember who provided that information. This interactive lesson was a huge hit and appealed to all of the different learning styles in my classroom (hearing the material read, seeing the material as we read it, passing the robot around, getting up and posting things on the robot, having a group discussion).
main_idea_robot_informal_lesson_plan.odt | |
File Size: | 157 kb |
File Type: | odt |
FAIRYTALE LESSON PLAN
Another excellent example of taking idea ownership can be seen through this fairytale brainstorming session. Although it was done on the spot, on chart paper, and took little planning, the students still excelled when given the opportunity to mark that something was THEIR idea.