Web 2.

0 Cross-curriculum Lesson Development

By Michael D. King
Most school curriculum models use a traditional format for learning in which
individual subject matter is taught in isolation. Integrating the content
creates a curriculum that is both challenging and meaningful to students.
The process of developing cross curriculum interdisciplinary lessons using a
Blog or Wiki as a learning resource medium has several stages, including
identifying the learner outcomes, selecting a theme, developing a curriculum
web, establishing multimedia resources, creating activities, and designing
assessment. This process for developing cross-curriculum lessons for Web
2.0 collaborative network promotes effective teaching practices by bringing
together elements of curriculum resources that interact with one another
into a coherent, workable framework. The model below will be used as a
guide in for developing and integrating multiple resources into a
collaborative Web 2.0 cross-curriculum lesson.

The Web 2.0 Cross-curriculum Lesson

Step One Step Two Step Three Step Four Step Five
Identifying Outcomes Establish A Theme Aligning Outcomes Establish Resources Lesson Design

Use State and Selecting a Use a Curriculum Use Search Develop a Lesson
National Universal Theme Web to Features and Plan & Create a
Standards to for the Cross- Organize Create Media Cross-curriculum
Identify Curriculum Web Content and Resources Web 2.0 Lesson
Outcomes and 2.0 Lesson Align Skills
Select a Theme

Step One: Identifying Outcomes

In this process, the teacher selects the outcomes that should be taught in
each content area. Outcomes should be selected based on the prescriptive
needs of the learner and the desired outcomes of the district. By focusing
instruction on essential learning outcomes and skills, alignment activities can
play an important role in improving student achievement. The selection of
outcomes is based on the principle that teachers should facilitate what they
expect students to learn. This process require teachers to define clearly the
learning outcomes that students are expected to master during the
facilitation of the lesson. For example, a fifth grade teacher reviews his or her
list of expected learner outcomes and finds that students will be assessed at
the end of the school year in the following geography areas, language arts,
math, and history.

HISTORY: The student will:

• Examine the reasons for the problems faced in and the results of key
expeditions of Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and England (e.g.,
Columbus, Ponce de León, Magellan, Coronado, Cortés, Hudson, Raleigh,
and La Salle) and the competition for control of North America.

GEOGRAPHY: The student will:

• Identify graphs, charts, diagrams, and other sources and representations,
such as aerial and shuttle photographs, satellite-produced images, the
geographic information system (GIS), encyclopedias, almanacs,
dictionaries, atlases, and computer-based technologies and construct and
use maps of locales, regions, continents, and the world that demonstrate
an understanding of mental mapping.

LANGUAGE ARTS: The student will:

• Communicate through a variety of written forms and for a variety of
writing for a specific audience or person.
• Demonstrate appropriate practices in writing by applying standard English
conventions to the revising and editing stages of writing.
• Write research reports about important ideas, issues, or events that:
a. frame questions about an idea or issue to direct the investigation.
b. establish a main idea or topic.
c. develop the topic with simple facts, details, examples, and
explanations to support the main idea.
d. use a variety of information sources, including speakers, firsthand
interviews, reference materials, and online information.

MATH: The student will:

Apply geometric properties and relationships and use measurements within
the metric and customary systems to solve problems in a variety of contexts.
1. identify and describe the basic properties of figures (e.g., two or three-
dimensionality, symmetry, number of faces, types of angles).
2. find the perimeter of simple polygons and area of a rectangle (e.g., use 1-
inch tiles to build rectangles of different perimeters and areas).
3. use the appropriate units and tools to estimate and measure temperature,
distance, length, weight, and angles.
4. convert basic measurements of volume, weight and distance within the
same system for metric and customary units (e.g., inches to feet, hours to
minutes, centimeters to meters).

The skills listed above would then become the priority in designing the cross-
curriculum Web 2.0 collaborative lesson. These selected outcomes will
become a part of the curriculum web in Step Three after a theme for the
lesson has been selected. The outcomes selected will also be a reference
guide when using search features. Identifying outcomes helps in the overall
design of the cross-curriculum lesson and will support the identification of
content for the facilitation of the lesson.

Step Two: Selecting and Developing a Theme

The next step in developing a cross-curriculum Web 2.0 collaborative lesson
is to review the outcomes matrices and to select a theme for lesson
development. For an interdisciplinary lesson to be successful, the theme
must allow for many different areas of exploration and should relate to some
facet of the students’ lives so that it will capture their interest and give the
collaborative lesson a real-life application. When the curriculum connects
with the students’ lives and experiences, they are more likely to internalize
what they learn.

The following criteria are helpful when selecting a theme:

• The theme should have high student interest.
• The theme should connect students’ lives to the world outside the
classroom.
• The theme should connect naturally with many subject areas.
• The theme should have high teacher interest.

The theme selected for creating this cross-curriculum Web 2.0 based lesson
that will be used as an example will be entitled “The World of Christopher
Columbus.” The reason for selecting this theme is that it will provide content
for the majority of the objectives identified when aligning standards to state
assessments.

Step Three: Developing a Curriculum Web

After selecting a theme, the teacher can develop a thematic diagram or web,
which is an excellent way to organize an interdisciplinary unit. At the center
of the web is the central theme. Spanning outward from it are the supporting
themes, which are related to a different content area, such as social studies,
language arts, and history. (See figure below) Since the teacher has already
identified the important learning outcomes, those outcomes are added to the
appropriate supporting theme on the web. Additional content areas could be
added such as math and science. Once identified the content areas and
 assigned objectives will support unitedstreaming searches for lesson plan
development.

Web 2.0 CURRICULUM WEB

Examine the reasons for, the problems faced in,
Relative location, direction, latitude, longitude, key, legend, and the results of the Columbus expeditions
map symbols, scale, size, shape, and landforms.

HISTOR
SOCIAL
Y
STUDIE
S

THE WORLD
Evaluate and draw conclusions from OF Writing Process
CHRISTOPHE
different kinds of maps.
R COLUMBUS
LANGUAG
E
Problem Solving ARTS
MATH

Mechanics, Usage

Writing a Research Paper

Measurement

Step Four: Establishing Multimedia Resources

The next step is for the teacher to identify the skills, activities, and
experiences he or she will use in the instruction of the learning outcomes
and to design appropriate assessment strategies for evaluating them. This
can be accomplished through Google creative common searches for
multimedia content using video, pictures, slide shares and text documents as
resources.

This process first requires the creation of folders for downloadable resources.
These folders would include a single folder named for each resource. For
example, the teacher would create one folder for videos, and additional
folders for images, text resource files and clip art. The end result of creating
folders and downloading resources will prepare the teacher for the next step
in interdisciplinary lesson design. You could also use social bookmarking
strategies through Technoradi, del.icio.us Furl, Netvibes and social media
search engine.

Social Bookmarking Demonstrations and Tutorials

• Social Boomarking in Plain English Video
• Social Bookmarking Del.icio.us Exposed Slide Presentation
• Furl Guide Document

Search Engine
• Social Media Search Engine

Step Five: Designing an Cross-curriculum Web 2.0 Lesson

The next step in the process of developing an interdisciplinary lesson is to
use the curriculum web, to design a Web 2.0 collaborative lesson that
correlates all the specific learning outcomes.

The first course of action is to write a master lesson plan. The master lesson
plan should include all of the following elements: the presentation of the
necessary background materials, a list of the skills necessary for the
successful completion of the lesson, the project or activities, a review or
reteaching, a conclusion that ties every lesson within the cross-curriculum
lesson together, and a final assessment. After the master lesson plan is
developed, the individual content can be embedded into the design of the
Web 2.0 lesson. The Web 2.0 cross-curriculum lesson plans should include
the lesson’s title or type, the learning outcomes or objectives, the steps
necessary for executing the lesson, the length of time in days needed to
complete the lesson, and a list of the necessary resources. After the teacher
has developed his o her Web 2.0 cross-curriculum lesson plan, a procedure
for placing content onto the Wiki or Blog Website should start with the
introduction of content and how this content will interrelate with the theme
of the lesson.

Designing Activities
Another area for which teachers are responsible in the planning process is
designing activities that support the desired learning outcome of the lesson.
Activity structures are the backbone of all lessons and determine, along with
delivery statistics, the amount of learning that will occur. How the activity is
structured determines both teacher and student behaviors during the lesson.
Whenever teachers make decisions concerning activity structures, the
following three points must be determined: (1) how long the activity will
take, (2) how the activity fits within the context of the lesson, and (3) which
element of the lesson as a whole will follow the activity in order to support
new learning. Additional variables to be considered by the teacher in the
design of activity structures include: methods for how the knowledge will be
reinforced, determination of how the skills will be attained, and instruction on
how to design future activities that support a continuous flow in the learning
process.

Designing Methods of Assessment

A performance assessment can evaluate students who are demonstrating
their skills by performing certain tasks, or it can evaluate products that
students have produced to demonstrate their knowledge. Performance
assessments can be activities such as science experiments and lab
procedures, essays, speeches, computer programming, and so forth.
Constructing performance assessment rubrics and applying these
assessment strategies to the interdisciplinary whiteboard lesson will enable
students to demonstrate their basic skills through a real-world application.

Before constructing a performance assessment, the designer must decide on

the time length for the assignment, which could range from one class period
to a week, or even a month for assessments that require extensive research.
Next, the designer must select the performance modes which the task will
require such as speaking, writing, problem solving, and so forth. The
designer must also decide how the students will participate in performing the
task, for example, individually, in pairs, or in small groups.

The actual process of designing performance assessments varies depending

on the complexity of the task and the availability of time. The performance
assessment template outlines the steps necessary for designing performance
assessments. The performance assessment template, along with the
performance assessment worksheet, will help assessment designers to
create their own specific assessments for whiteboard lessons. It should be
noted that assessment techniques can be designed by using either
traditional or alternative methods of assessment. Alternative assessment
refers to new assessment techniques that require students to construct a
response to an open-ended problem or task. In the case of both traditional
and alternative assessment, the task and the assessment should be closely
aligned to the learning outcomes.

Copyright © 2008

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