Julia Lowe

Digital Product
Introduction
The ultimate goal of this lesson is mastery of collaborative group discussion, defending
positions and identifying counterarguments. The anticipation guide strategy not only previews
Hamlets major themes for students, but also provides a simple platform for students to practice
respectful debate and discussion.
I have chosen to enhance the traditional anticipation guide format of splitting the room
and having students walk to a designated agreement or disagreement zone by making the
discussion partially digital. Students will be breaking into small discussion groups and using the
collaborative graphic organizer tool MindMeister to post their ideas. Each group will start with a
different statement node and cycle through at least two other nodes during the class, allowing
them to work at their own pace and see the thoughts of other groups added in real-time.
Before beginning this lesson, students are not required to have any particular prerequisite
technology skills. If students choose to be the scribe for the group or use their phones to vote in
agreement or disagreement on each node, they would only need to know how to open the website
and have adequate typing skills. Otherwise, all directions for operating the website are modeled
before the discussion begins. In terms of content, students do not need to have any prior
knowledge of the text that they are previewing or any specialized debate skills. Proper argument
and discussion strategies are reviewed at the beginning of the lesson in case students do not
already have some experience with maintaining respectful discussion.
My instructional strategies are appropriate for the whole class because a collaborative
product is being assembled that allows them to synthesize and make predictions about the text,
using statements that they can take positions on and directly relate to their lives. Individual
students that are uncomfortable with class-wide discussion have both the small-group alternative
and the online outlet to participate and contribute ideas. Students with specific learning needs
can be helped by the other members of the heterogeneous groups and also as the instructor walks
around to monitor discussion. The visual aspect of both the discussion itself and the task
manager also provides hard scaffolding for students whose learning needs require more
structured discussion.
Discourse is a language demand present in this lesson in that students will be practicing
respectful debate, defense of positions, and understanding of counterarguments. I will support
students in meeting that demand by giving basic guidelines of respectful discussion and what the
standards of fallacies and bias that students should avoid in these discussions should be.

Julia Lowe

Lesson Plan
Title of the Lesson: Anticipation Guide: Digital Discussion
Grade Level: 9th-10th
Length of Lesson: This lesson will take up a full class period.
Overview of the Lesson: In this lesson, students will engage in small group discussion and use
MindMeister to collaborate digitally and reach agreements on anticipation guide statements to
preview the upcoming text Hamlet.
Learning Goals: Students will be able to express and defend their positions on statements and
address counterarguments in heterogeneous groups.
Students will be able to use the tool MindMeister to manage tasks and collaborate to assemble a
digital graphic organizer.

NC Common Core Standards Being Addressed:

English: Speaking and Listening Standards
Comprehension and Collaboration 1
Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in
groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 910 topics, texts, and issues, building
on others ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
How the Lesson Will Flow:
I.
Anticipatory Set (1-2 minutes)
This is the first day of a unit on Shakespeares Hamlet, and is an activity that will allow
students to preview and become more comfortable with the text. Today, students will be
using the online tool MindMeister in groups to engage in a digital discussion on several
topics that will show up in the text.
II.
Teaching: Input (5-10 minutes)
Write (and say out loud) an example statement on the board or another display that
mimics the format of the statements in the anticipation guide. Give an example of an
agreement statement and a disagreement statement, and then a nuanced consensus
statement that addresses both arguments. After showing these different types of
sentences, lay out some basic rules for respectful discussion: not using fallacious
arguments or attacks, citing evidence for your position, and making clear, politically
correct statements.
III.

Teaching: Modeling (15-20 minutes)

1. Open the MindMeister graphic organizer (pre-loaded with statements and task
lists) and the associated MeisterTask organizer and show students the basic
mechanics of the website. They will be using the following tools on the Mind Map,
after selecting a node:

Julia Lowe

Up/Down voting
Adding sub-ideas
Editing text
Marking a task complete
2. Break students into four groups, each with at least one laptop device (this
student will be the designated typer). Numbering students off will be a good
strategy as the group will need to have an identifying number on the Mind Map.
Other students in the group may use their phones to engage in the voting portion
of the discussion, if they wish. Ask each typer for an email address and use
these to invite each group to the project from MeisterTask. Display the public link
for the Mind Map as well for students that want to vote or type, but are not the
scribe for the group.
3. Explain (and write on the board) the task list, which is the same for all nodes, and
demonstrate how to type their responses as ideas and label them under their
group number.
4. Display the order in which students should move through the statements
(clockwise/counterclockwise) once they complete their first node.
IV.
Teaching: Checking for Understanding (1 minute)
Ask students to raise their hand if they have any questions about managing the website
and the graphic organizer before allowing them to begin discussion.
V.
Guided Practice (40 minutes - end of class)
Move around the room throughout to monitor discussion, ensuring that it is respectful,
and the assembly of the graphic organizer. Keeping the Mind Map displayed by a
projector will help maintain accountability and visibility for the teacher to see student
responses as they type them in. The teacher can also keep an eye on MeisterTask to
monitor the pace at which students are working. The teacher can use this time to
provide extra assistance to certain groups, should they struggle more with some aspect
of the assignment than others.
VI.
Closure (5 minutes)
Ideally, students should make it through about 3-4 rotations, but there are enough
nodes that a group can complete up to 8, if they move extremely quickly. Make sure
each group completes at least 2 nodes so that each node has at least one groups
response. When there are about 10-15 minutes left in class, ask students to reach a
good stopping point in their nodes and conclude by quickly summarizing the points
made by different groups in the Mind Map. Ask students to point out some notable ideas
they had during the activity and if they have any predictions for the themes that will be
involved in Hamlet. The tool can then be used long-term, so that the students would
comment and amend their ideas as they continue to read and develop opinions of the
text. Conclude by asking students for their opinions on MindMeister, and ask if they
would use this tool for delegating tasks and planning group projects in other classes.

Julia Lowe

Assessment: The digital graphic organizer itself will be an informal assessment of the
productivity of student discussion. Students will also be able to refer back to this graphic
organizer to compare their expectations with the reality of Hamlet as they begin to understand
the text better. Furthermore, student participation is informally assessed by the completion
statistics available through MeisterTask. The task assignment feature of MindMeister allows for
this accountability for each group. If the teacher observes that not all students in the group
participated in verbal discussion as part of the activity, they can make up their credit by posting
their opinions as comments to the nodes for homework.
Sources for the Lesson: The statements I used as part of the anticipation guide were from a set
of traditional anticipation statements for Hamlet from a worksheet provided on the website
TeacherWeb:
http://teacherweb.com/NY/AlbertusMagnusHighSchool/RiversM/hamlet-anticipation-guide-1.pdf

Student Examples
https://mm.tt/791086669?t=1cP3cntEig

Julia Lowe

Reflection
Below are the top ten lessons I learned from incorporating technology into a lesson plan.
1. Interactive activities that incorporate technology enhance learning by exposing students
to digital tools and resources that they can evaluate and decide whether to use in other
academic contexts or in their daily lives.
2. Incorporating technology into a lesson comes with many unforeseeable complications
that may alter the tools effectiveness.
3. The purpose of the tool may change; though I initially intended for this organizer to be
much less text-heavy and more as a way to prompt discussion, it turned out to produce a
visual resource for students to build and return to and become an introduction to an
effective project planning and organizing digital tool.
4. A technological tool such as this one can be depended on more or less heavily
depending on how comfortable the class is with technology and/or discussion.
5. Sometimes a lesson does not even need technological products to effectively complete
academic standards, but
6. ...Certain technological tools can be useful as a method of differentiation for some
students with special needs, as well as visual and tactile learners.
7. In all honesty, my lesson plan might not work in a classroom that isnt mature enough or
already comfortable using tools like this; using technology should be tested and
researched for its classroom benefits.
8. A new strategy I used to incorporate technology involved building on an oral discussion
format (anticipation guide) that many of my own teachers used for debate and
discussion. I chose to scaffold that using the digital product of a collaborative graphic
organizer.
9. This lesson plan is a guideline in that it would need the support of classroom rules to
control behavior in small groups that would change based on grade, context, and ability
level.
10. A major benefit of having an online product to organize discussion is that it can be
returned to at home if students do not feel comfortable talking out loud during class, but
still need to show participation in the conversation.

Julia Lowe

Works Cited
Rivers, M. E. (n.d.). Anticipation Guide: Hamlet. Retrieved November 28, 2016, from
http://teacherweb.com/NY/AlbertusMagnusHighSchool/RiversM/hamlet-anticipation-guide-1.pdf