Final Project

My final project is going to be about the Water Cycle. I chose the Water Cycle because it was a topic that I actually had to teach about during my teacher assisting placement for my Unit on Earth’s Systems and Interactions. When I was teaching the Water Cycle to my 6^th graders, I felt like it would be a good fit for the technology integrated lesson plan because there are a lot of components that would be learned by students much better in a more visual and interactive setting that technology can provide. Many of these “cycles” such as the rock cycle and water cycle can be hard for students to interpret when just reading about it. Therefore, I think it is important that for these challenging topics we provide means for students to work hands on with the concepts and create meaningful projects for authentic audiences. Incorporating technology into these experiences can both empower and transform student learning.

The outline of my lesson plan includes introductions to the water cycle, explanations of the water cycle via online virtual and interactive labs and a final project presentation of a Rube Goldberg Machine Screencast modeling the water cycle. To begin frontloading for this unit, I will use Padlet and some pictures of landscapes to get students thinking about the different places and phases in which water can be found. I will then move into using some interactive Water Cycle labs from both “Earth Guide” and a Weebly page. This will hopefully accommodate all levels of learners by allowing students to work at their own pace, have interactive visuals and have sound options. The final project will be a group project with pairings made based on pre-test scores to allow those who are similarly minded to work together. This project requires collaboration in order to make a final screencast project that is a Rube Goldberg Machine whose components represent different parts of the Water Cycle. Different teams, based on the different tiers of students, will have varying project requirements in order to modify the project in a way to accommodate all levels of learners. I think using the screencast for the final project will require an extra degree of collaboration and group interaction that a poster does not require, thus meeting the technology standard stating that “students will contribute constructively to project teams, assuming various roles and responsibilities to work effectively toward a common goal” (ISTE Global Collaborator 7C) while also meeting the NGSS requirements for developing a model representing the Water Cycle.

Assessment Plan

Objective	Formative Assessment	Technology Used
1 & 2	Water Cycle Diagram Pre-Test	Online Virtual Lab Quiz
2	Where can I find water?	Padlet
1	Bunsen Burner Demo	Google Forms
1 & 2	Interactive Water Cycle Activity	Google Doc Submission
1 & 2	Water Cycle Review	Quizlet Live

Objective	Summative Assessment	Technology Used
1, 2 & 3	Rube Goldberg Project	Webquest and Screencast
1 & 2	Water Cycle Quiz	Google Forms

Below is a figure that shows an example of the beginnings of a Rube Goldberg Machine.

The Gifted Students: Video Response

Watching these videos on "Giftedness" was really enlightening because in many ways, they are the least accommodated group of students in many school situations. Just because every student is held to the standard of achieving at a high level, does not mean that each student's "high level" is the same. Something that I learned in these videos was that IEP's and 504 plans can be used to help target both learning disabilities and areas of giftedness by giving accommodations for the students to keep learning and excelling.

These videos also helped debunk one of my prior misconceptions, one that many others may have as well. It was that there can be a high level of misdiagnosis in students or individuals that are gifted because many of the "symptoms" of being gifted are similar to those symptoms of disorders like Asperger's Syndrome or ADD, especially when individual's IQ is really high such as over 130. Personally, I guess I had the incorrect belief that learning disabilities and giftedness both appear in students at the same time; however, they can also occur separately. Another misconception that I had was that gifted students have a hard time making friends, and I was informed that in reality this is not always the case. Yes, they can struggle socially causing them to not be very good at making friends. However, I am now aware that gifted students don't just have a general inability to make friends it is just more normal for them to often only have one or two good friends or to try to make friends with people that are older than them because they feel like they are socially understood by these older people or other gifted students.

A student can be both gifted and learning disabled. Therefore, in my current placement and my future classroom I need to know the students personally in order to not foster mismatch between the student and the assessment. Students may be gifted in the fact they are able to think and comprehend on a higher level than the average student; however, their learning disability may make it hard to see that on paper. Consequently, accommodations may be necessary for the student. This is where technology can help assist me and the gifted students in my classroom. For example, when giving an assessment I can have different variations of the test for various learners. This may look like 2 option multiple choice for the lower tier, 4 multiple choice options for the average learner and 5 multiple choice answers for the higher tier. This extra answer would be like "both a and b," or "all of the above." With this extra option, easily added on online assessment creators, I can test students at higher levels of understanding when necessary. Also, I can provide a variety in my assessment techniques. Only ever offering multiple choice or written exams will not always benefit the gifted and or learning disable students. For example, I could offer oral exams and or individual projects. Technology can also help reach the higher level students by creating a webquest with various options for different groups of students. These groups would be determined by a pre-assessment, and then the gifted students could do a more open ended project to extend thinking into higher, more challenging levels.

Another topic for consideration in my current and future science classroom is the concept that gifted students often struggle with social interaction, fear of failure and perfectionism. Consequently, they often want to work individually because they think differently than other students. Therefore, when it comes to projects, I can give the option to do a group project or work individually. This will give the gifted student an option to work alone and only be responsible for oneself. With technology I can easily differentiate the extent of the project to suit the groups needs. For example, the presentation or project could be done using PowerPoint, Prezi, Padlet, etc. However, the required length or how open ended the project is would be determined by the size of group and learning traits of the group. When learning about Earth's Systems, I could have the gifted students not only learn about what the 4 main systems of Earth are but I could also have them apply it to their daily life and depict interactions of systems via video presentation or blog posts. The videos were describing that gifted students are often into online games. Therefore, I could harness their love for the online world and use it for productivity in science class. By assigning them to keep classroom blog posts instead of a hand-written science journal, the gifted students would get the chance to be part of the online community and express their ideas not just in words but also by video or pictures embedded in their posts. This can help combat their learning disabilities of getting their knowledge out on paper or into words. Overall, its important to remember that normal is a relative and subject ideology. We need to make sure as educators that we are accommodating all students' "normal," especially the often over-looked gifted students. In relation to science, us educators need to be able to recognize gifted students, and push them to excel in their field of excellence such as STEM.

Here is a helpful video on some techniques teachers can use to teach gifted students.