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Lesson Plan for

Implementing NETSS
Template I
(More Directed Learning Activities)
Template with guiding questions
Teacher(s)
Name Wayne Cordy
Position Second Grade Teacher
School/District Oakhurst Elementary School/City Schools of Decatur
E-mail wcordy@csdecatur.net
Phone 404-370-4470
Grade Level(s) 2
nd
Grade
Content Area Language Arts
Time line 1-2 days

Standards (What do you want students to know and be able to do? What knowledge, skills, and strategies do you
expect students to gain? Are there connections to other curriculum areas and subject area benchmarks? )
Content Standards
ELACC2RL2: Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central
message, lesson, or moral.
ELACC2RL7: Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate
understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.

ELACC2W6: With guidance and support from adults, use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing,
including in collaboration with peers.

NETS*S Standards
Creativity and Innovation
Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes
using technology.
a. Apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes
b. Create original works as a means of personal or group expression

Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to
support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.
a. Interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and
media
b. Communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats

Overview (a short summary of the lesson or unit including assignment or expected or possible products)
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During this unit, the students will practice summarizing folktales for an authentic audience, their grade level and
younger peers. Students will work in pairs to read an appropriate folktale on their reading level and based on
their interest. After reading their folktale, the students will create a written and visual summary of their folktales
that focuses on the essential parts of the tale including determining the moral with evidence from the folktale to
support their conclusions and compare themselves to characters in their story. Pairs will have to synthesize their
understanding of their folktale and combine their understanding to create a complete summary. Students will
choose a method of sharing their summary with others from four forms of technology. Final products will be
posted on our class website for others to view and post feedback. Students in our class will be required to view
one summary project and post feedback including a comparison of their own folktales with the post theyre
offering feedback on. Creators will also be able to offer answers back to their feedback.

Essential Questions (What essential question or learning are you addressing? What would students care or
want to know about the topic? What are some questions to get students thinking about the topic or generate
interest about the topic? What questions can you ask students to help them focus on important aspects of the
topic? What background or prior knowledge will you expect students to bring to this topic and build on?)
What can we learn from folktales that can be applied to our world today?
How can summarizing a story help us to better understand stories?
How can technology tools be used to share our knowledge?

Assessment (What will students do or produce to illustrate their learning? What can students do to generate new
knowledge? How will you assess how students are progressing (formative assessment)? How will you assess
what they produce or do? How will you differentiate products?)
Students will show their understanding of summarizing and their folktale by crafting summarizes that feature
essential information including what their folktale taught them and comparing themselves to the characters in their
tale. I will assess student pairs on their final products using a rubric that covers the essential elements of
process, content, and product. During the process stage, the teacher will use a checklist to assess each
students process during their work time. Also, peers will assess each other on their contributions during the
process stage using a rubric. Products will be differentiated based on interests and creativity, plus the technology
tools used to create the final products.

Resources (How does technology support student learning? What digital tools, and resourcesonline student
tools, research sites, student handouts, tools, tutorials, templates, assessment rubrics, etchelp elucidate or
explain the content or allow students to interact with the content? What previous technology skills should students
have to complete this project?)
Technology will support student learning as it will be used by the students to craft their product and communicate
their learning to others. Students will use Voice Thread, podcasts, Edmodo, or Google Docs to create their
products. Before using the technology tools, the students will need to read their books, create a summary draft,
and decide on which tool would be best to convey their message. If time permits, the students may choose more
than one way to display their products. My students have prior experience with the tools above, so a short review
may be needed on how to use them appropriately for this project.

Instructional Plan
Preparation (What student needs, interests, and prior learning provide a foundation for this lesson? How can you
find out if students have this foundation? What difficulties might students have?)
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Prior to this lesson, students will need an understanding of what a folktale is and how it differs from other types of
literature. Also, students need to have had exposure to a variety of folktales and guided practice on identifying
the moral or lesson of these tales. I will find out if students have an understanding of folktales through
questioning activities during read alouds or class discussions to elicit information from students, or using a KWL
chart about folktales, or questioning during reading conferences. From my assessments, my students needed
practice with identifying what a folktale is and practice identifying the moral of a folktale. Before conducting this
learning experience, I will model through explicit lessons on what a summary is and how it differs from a retelling.
When summarizing a folktale, students might have difficulty with identifying the moral so explicit instruction will
need to be done before the students complete the activity independently. Graphic organizers may also be helpful
for students that have a hard time organizing their thoughts when summarizing.

Management Describe the classroom management strategies will you use to manage your students and the use
of digital tools and resources. How and where will your students work? (small groups, whole group, individuals,
classroom, lab, etc.) What strategies will you use to achieve equitable access to the Internet while completing this
lesson? Describe what technical issues might arise during the Internet lesson and explain how you will resolve or
troubleshoot them?
When completing this project, the students will have dedicated work times to complete it. Since some products
need a quiet place to record their products, students will be provided with quiet spaces to work within and outside
of the classroom. To ensure quality and use of time wisely, students will be assigned times to complete their
projects and have time for the teacher to monitor student work. Students not recording will be doing something
quietly to avoid the microphone picking up any excess noise. Also, to provide ease with recording, students may
use headsets or Ipad apps to directly record to such as the Voice Thread app. Furthermore, the students will
work in pairs in the classroom and in the computer lab. Mostly, the students will work in the classroom. To
achieve equitable access to the Internet, all groups will have dedicated times to use the Internet equally with all
the students using the Internet during their work periods. In addition, I will make sure that I have enough
technology tools including Ipads or computers to distribute equally. We will also have a sign off checklist for each
pair to ensure that all students utilize the tools provided and to ensure that all students have enough opportunities
to interact with the tools. One technical issue that may arise is recording online or to an app such as Voice
Thread is that students may notice that their voices are either too low or nothing was recorded. This could be
fixed by checking to see if the mic settings are correct and making sure that your browser is up to date. Another
technical issue that may arise is Google Docs or any online app freezing or the browser may close unexpectedly.
To prevent this, make sure that a limited amount of applications are open. If possible, only have one application
open. Also, prompt students to save often if possible especially with written items on Google Docs or pausing
when recording a podcast to save work in progress.

Instructional Strategies and Learning Activities Describe the research-based instructional strategies you will
use with this lesson. How will your learning environment support these activities? What is your role? What are the
students' roles in the lesson? How can you ensure higher order thinking at the analysis, evaluation, or creativity
levels of Blooms Taxonomy? How can the technology support your teaching? What authentic, relevant, and
meaningful learning activities and tasks will your students complete? How will they build knowledge and skills?
How will students use digital tools and resources to communicate and collaborate with each other and others?
How will you facilitate the collaboration?
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To ensure student success during the scope of this lesson, I will provide explicit models of summaries throughout
the unit and use a variety of the tools to display my summaries. After modeling the use of the tools, I will meet
with each group during their summary writing and discuss which tool or tools would be best to display their
summary. We will also create handy anchor charts to review each type of technology, their functions, and what
we can use them for. The learning environment will support these activities in this lesson by providing a quality
work environment that affords students equitable access to the Internet and tools, support for students that need
assistance, appropriate work environments with clear expectations, and freedom to make mistakes and accept
them as part of the learning experience. My role will be as a facilitator of learning as I will stimulate discussion
and monitor the process of learning, but will not control or over-simplify student tasks. The role of the students in
this lesson is that of a producer as they will use tools to produce products to share their understanding of their
folktales which includes their evaluation of the important parts of a folktale and relate the moral of their story to
their lives. Higher order thinking skills will be needed throughout the course of this project to complete it
successfully. Students will have to use higher order thinking skills to summarize, draw conclusions as they think
about the morals of their folktales, and compare the characters in their read folktales to themselves.
Furthermore, students will have to provide feedback which will include comparing their read folktale to
classmates summarized folktale. Technology will support my teaching as it will provide a variety of methods for
my students to display their learning and will help me differentiate products based on interest. Within this project,
the students will create a variety of summaries of text of varying ranges for an authentic audience and develop
presentation skills using technology that will prove beneficial to them as workers in the 21
st
century. In addition,
the students will further their understanding of the tools involved and how these tools can be used to
communicate ideas with others. Students will build knowledge of summarizing text through application and
through work with their partner. Also, through practice with the technology tools, the students will build onto their
understanding of these tools and their uses. In the final product, the students will share their partnership and
individual understanding of folktales with members of our class. Students will view other pair summaries and
provide constructive feedback. Furthermore, publishing items online provides a worldwide audience for my
students and will help them see the authenticity of their work. I will facilitate this collaboration by providing a
common space for the students to post their final products and making time available for students to provide
feedback.

Differentiation (How will you differentiate content and process to accommodate various learning styles and
abilities? How will you help students learn independently and with others? How will you provide extensions and
opportunities for enrichment? What assistive technologies will you need to provide?)
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To accommodate various abilities, the students will choose books in their range to use within their pairs and
although students may have similar reading ranges, pairs will be heterogeneous in terms of their comprehension
levels. Furthermore, to accommodate various learning styles, the product involves both written and illustrative
summaries, and students are able to choose from a variety of methods to demonstrate their learning. Students
will learn independently as they read books that are appropriate for their reading level and practice summarizing
their reading which will include the main parts, moral, and their connection to the characters/lesson. Enrichment
opportunities are naturally built in as students can make their product as complex as they want as long as they
follow the guidelines outlined in the rubric. Also, students may use other technology tool choices to display their
summary. Students may also begin a new summary and create a new product to complement their summary. To
support all learners, I will provide assistive technologies as appropriate for the learner. To support students that
have impairments or disabilities that delay or hinder verbal communication, I will use technology tools to support
them depending on the severity of their impairment or disability. To assist these students, I will use electronic
devices with voice output to support these students, a pocket-size communication book, a letter/word/icon
communication board, or a small computer to type messages. If students have visual impairments, I will enlarge
the zoom on the computer, provide a large-key computer keyboard, use a screen enlarger for the computer, use
screen reader accessibility tools, utilize speech recognition system software, or provide Braille labels on the
keyboard. If students have impairments or disabilities that hinder handwriting, custom keyboards, keyboard
guards, slant boards, speech recognition software, computer or word processor for writing, or wrist supports for
typing may be needed. If students have impairments or disabilities that hinder written expression, electronic
dictionaries, electronic thesauruses, spell check programs, computer or word processor for writing, tape recorder
or digital recording tools, or word prediction software will be provided. To assist students with impairments and
disabilities that are audio related, speech synthesizers, speech to text software, or audio amplifiers will be used.
For ELL students, appropriate text at their reading level will be provided, visual cues to match verbal directions
will also be provided, and if possible, the teacher will have the directions for the assignments recorded in the
students native language if appropriate.




IEP information will help to inform my decision about the appropriate tool to use.
.



Reflection (Will there be a closing event? Will students be asked to reflect upon their work? Will students be
asked to provide feedback on the assignment itself? What will be your process for answering the following
questions?
Did students find the lesson meaningful and worth completing?
In what ways was this lesson effective?
What went well and why?
What did not go well and why?
How would you teach this lesson differently?
The closing event will be the students sharing their summaries and what they learned during the course of the
project. Students will also share the feedback they provided to other students products. To reflect upon their
work, the students will assess their work during the process stage and the final product. My observation of the
overall project, feedback from students, and evaluating work samples will be my process for answering the above
questions.

Closure: Anything else you would like to reflect upon regarding lessons learned and/or your experience with
implementing this lesson. What advice would you give others if they were to implement the lesson?
I truly enjoyed implementing this lesson as it showed me how practical it can be to integrate technology into our
content standards. With a few modifications, I plan on repeating this lesson and I am sure it will have the same
impact on my students as it did this year. My advice to others if they implement this lesson is to be patient with
yourself and your students. Take it slow. Model and model again if needed. With proper support and learning
environment, your students will love this experience as much or more than mine have.