2. The Brain & the 5 Senses Dawn Burhans Pacheco Elementary Spring 2001

3. Lesson Plan

4. Unit Timeline The amount of time is determined by: Age of Student Ability of Students Accessibility Whole Class vs. Individual

5. I have 4 th grade students who have had some keyboarding, and are familiar with accessing the Internet at the same time as other local software. We started the unit with the students accessing the information videos at their own pace, but due to time constraints, went to a whole class presentation of the videos. We then went and worked in the Computer Lab to write their summaries into their slide shows. It has taken 3 weeks so far, with approximately 3 hours a week between Class Activities and Computer Lab time. 30% of the students are finished, with the rest within 2 slides of completion.

6. There are no science standards for the Central Nervous System or the 5 senses, except that the 5 senses are to be used to learn about a student’s environment. Pacheco decided that the 4 th grade would add such a unit to their curriculum. The following standards are general, and can actually be applied to any grade level.

7. Below are the official objectives of the unit. What I most wanted was that the students would have fun learning how to access the Internet in an educational manner, learn some basic skills with text in slide show presentations, and hopefully learn the basics of the system that allows them to learn about the world around them.

8. Activities There are 3 main areas that the activities fall into. 1. Hands-on Crafts 2. Note-taking from videos 3. Writing summaries on slides.

9. Assessments & Rubrics There are 2 areas to be assessed. 1. Writing – Pacheco Writing Rubric 2. Subject Material – Funbrain.com Quiz

10. Technology Integration Without the Internet, this lesson wouldn’t exist. BrainPop.com was THE major source of information. The students will be presenting their slideshows using our SmartBoard.

11. Hair Pulling time!! Where does one start? After the first day, I had to go back and break down the 1 st Step into 2. It made the kids much happier when I told them. Most of the changes had to do with going from individual to whole class pacing. That and going back to fix links that I thought worked, and didn’t.

12. Actually Doing it! As previously mentioned, I had to change how the students watched the videos. In retrospect, doing it as a class makes a lot of sense. 4 th graders don’t take notes well, and doing it together allowed me to do a quick review, add info, clarify info, etc. with them. It gave them a lot more focus and if they wanted/needed to go back and re-watch the videos on their own, they had a better idea of what they should be listening for.

13. How’d they do? They pleasantly surprised me! My class has a history of NOT tracking well, so of course getting started presented a great test of my patience. But, by the middle of the project, most of the students were truly self-guided. It was great to hear the noise-level reduce as they became focused on their tasks and to see them actually being able to manipulate the various windows needed on their own. Their actual test scores could have been better, but I think the overall project was a success.

14. Number Correct on Pre-Test

15. Number Correct on Post-Test

16. Before & After Though the overall scores aren’t great, the tighter grouping of the Post-test tells me that information was learned. I also found out, based on the questions that were missed, that I need to go back and re-vamp the questions asked. Not all of the information I was looking for them to know was actually found within the sites I was having them go to.

17. What Did I Learn??? That I really, really need to learn to not procrastinate! That having it all done BEFORE I have them start would have made my life slightly easier. That I need to allow a lot more time for the unit if I want them to do more of the note- taking on their own, but for 4 th grade, start at whole-class instruction first. My most exciting thing I learned was that a unit can be developed and set-up so that 90% of it can be done in a computer lab.

18. What did they learn? Cesar

19. What did they learn? Jesse C.

20. What did they learn? Morgan

21. What did they learn? Jacob

22. What did they learn? Haley

23. What did they learn? Cassie

24. Thank you to my 2000-2001 4 th Grade Class. They did a wonderful job and I’m very proud of all of them!