How will it work in the classroom?

• How does the Learning Path link to curricula and subject plans?

  Designing Your Lesson Plan

  When designing your own lesson/project, think about topics that should require your students to think deeply, to collaborate with others inside and outside of the classroom, and will allow them to share their findings in a final product or performance. Follow the lesson plan template to make sure you have thought through the different aspects of the unit.

  The following are examples from a few sections of the lesson plan template for Breakfast Around the World

   

  Instructional Objectives
  Students will:

  • Recognise the relationship between food and health;
  • Describe examples of healthy eating;
  • Examine one’s own breakfast habits critically;
  • Collect recipes and estimate the nutritional value;
  • Gather data on the breakfast habits of people in their area and in other countries and analyze the data;
  • Plan and organise a breakfast party with guests;
  • Document work results on the Internet.

   

  Guiding Questions for the Students:

  • How do healthy eating habits help me grow bigger and live longer?
  • How can we communicate with those outside our classroom?
  • How do advertisements help us make our food choices?
  • What is the right nutritional balance for me?
  • What do people in other parts of the world eat?
  • Are we really so different?

  Higher Order Thinking Skills:

  Students will: analyze, design, develop, organize, exampe, create.

• High Level Procedures

  The information below is a very general overview of the activites that go on each week. Each activity would have very specific lessons to make sure students were meeting the objectives of the activities.

  1^st Week
  Working in collaborative teams, students will collect information about the necessity of eating breakfast every day. They will learn to estimate the nutritional value of breakfast ingredients and create a spreadsheet to display their data. The teams will create and implement an online survey (prepare questions, determine the target group, organise the execution of the survey)

  2^nd Week
  The teams will collect data from the online survey and analyze breakfast habits (evaluate and publish the results of the survey), collect tips and recipes to create an online recipe book, and create campaigns for healthy breakfasts using a variety of digital tools

  3^rd Week
  They will communicate with others via email and Skype  to find out about breakfast habits in other countries/continents, estimate the nutritional value of what the data they gathered and compare and contrast to identify the healthiest breakfast

  4^th Week
  Groups will give multimedia presentations of work results, using their choice of presentation tool, and the entire class will plan and organize an international breakfast party

  How will your assess your students' learning?

  Formative and summative assessments should beoth be inlcuded in the assessment plans.

  Formative assessments include:

  • Questioning and discussion to assess prior knowledge and prompt higher-order thinking.
  • Students writing in their learning log, responding to prompts, several times a week. They have a rubric and self-assess their entries
  • Peer review of the creation and analysis of the graphs created from the survey results.
  • Frequent probing for understanding to monitor and adjust instruction in a responsive way.

  
  Summative assessment used:

  • The scoring guide and final presentation checklist are given to students before work on the projects begins. These assessments help students stay on track and remain aware of expectations for the projects.

  Assessment is a common practice in today’s classrooms. When teachers move to a student-centered classroom, assessment practices need to change. The overarching purpose of assessment is to give teachers the information they need to provide quality instruction. Embedded and on-going assessment is at the heart of project-based learning and provides a way for students to show and discover what they know in different ways. With assessment integrated throughout a unit of instruction, teachers learn more about their students’ needs and can adjust instruction to improve student achievement. McMillan (2000) explains, “When assessment is integrated with instruction, it informs teachers about what activities and assignments will be most useful, what level of teaching is most appropriate, and how summative assessments provide diagnostic information.”
  
  

  Visit The Intel Assessing Projects site where you will find help to develop or create your own strategies for student-centered assessments. The online interactive tool will also help you create formative and summative assessments of 21^st century skills.

  YOUR TURN: Preparation of Your Lesson Plan

  It is time for you to start creating a plan for your classroom. Go to the Action Plan and complete Part 1 - Lesson Plan template. You will address many factors including objectives, 21st century skills, procedures, collaboration, and assessment.

  YOUR TURN: Thinking About Classroom Implementation

  Teachers need to think beyond the nuts and bolts of their lesson plan. They need to think of potential challenges and solutions to those challenges. They need to think about specific pupils and how they may have to adapt the lesson to meet those students needs.  Please go to your Action Plan and complete Part 2 - Classroom Implementation on your Action Plan.

  Present your lesson plan drafts and materials you have generated to each other.
  Compare your work with that of your team members. If you are working on a plan together, check to make sure everything will fit together coherently.
  Revise your materials as a team if necessary.