LESSON 1 - What do you know about Weather & Climate?
Teacher Instructions
In this lesson, students will be practicing forming and defening their opinion as they vote on statements about Weather and climate using Kahoot. Using Kahoot results, I am able to get instant feedback on students choices and gather information on their prior knowledge. I can also use the information to start a conversation in class. Another pat of this lesson is the graphic organizer activity where students will visualize and organize acquired information about weather and climate. They will then compare and contrast this information using a Google Drawing Venn Diagram. This graphic organizer will be accessible and editable by students throughout the course of the unit to reflect on their new knowledge..
Description
Accessing Prior Knowledge - Kahoot:
Especially when teaching ELL students, it is important that the teacher determines the extent to which students have prior knowledge about a certain topic. Also, students prior knowledge need to be activated to facilitate synthesis and retaining of new material. This activity allows me to gain a better understanding of students’ prior knowledge in regards to the lesson’s topic. I chose to use Kahoot survey - not Quiz- to gather opinion and insight from students on the topic of Weather and Climate. Unlike Kahoot quiz, Kahoot surveys don't have right/wrong assigned to answers, and there is no points system or scoreboards. You will still see a bar graph between questions showing how many chose each answer. With Kahoot survey, I am able to find out what students already know without competition which will introduce a sense of stress and heightens their level of anxiety. By removing the competitive elements with Kahoot as a survey, I can shift students’ attention from focusing on what it takes to win to focusing on learning for its own sake, thus decreasing the cognitive load associated with competitive elements of this NMTT. Also, because students and I see immediate feedback between questions, students hardly notice they are evaluating their own knowledge and being evaluated and I can use the bar graphs to guide conversation. Lastly, the game-like activity will engage students in a fun and interactive activity that activates their prior knowledge while bringing them into the “flow” of the joy of learning (Flow Theory, 2010).
Rationale
Graphic Organizer - Google Drawing:
I chose to use Google Drawings for this activity for several reasons. First, our school uses Google Suite for Education, so all students have access to this tool for free through their Google accounts without the need for any extra installation or another username and password to remember. The tool is also very user friendly and easy to use which reduces the cognitive load associated with learning the tool for English language learners. With Google Drawings, I am able to add an image depiction of Weather and Climate in each of the two circle diagrams and allow students to drag and drop terms into the circles. When students first work on this diagram, they may have difficulty coming up with their own ideas and writing them, so using images to depict both terms in the Venn Diagram can facilitate generation of ideas and reduce cognitive demand by inspiring thinking. Using Google Drawing allows me to create a drag and drop interactive function in this diagram that lets students pick a term from a selection and then "drag-and-drop" words into the circles. Although some may claim that this added feature is a decorative and extraneous element, I agree with Richard Mayer's assertions that this Interactive material increases students' engagement levels and facilitate deep learning (Mayer, 2013). Basically, instead of adding the words to the correct circle diagrams for the students, with the drag and drop function I am able to help students with examples but push their thinking to choose where these terms should go. Lastly, since students will be making changes in the graphic organizer over the course of the unit, the teacher and students will get a visual map of students’ learning and how their knowledge has improved over time.