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Education Connection: Technology-facilitated Lesson
Plan (Paragraph Writing and Sharing with Laptop Computers)*
Teacher:
Barbara Creaser, Foothills Adult & Continuing Education
Class/Level:
Multi-Level ESL
Lesson Duration:
2.5 hours
Objectives (Learning Goals):
To have each student plan, orally tell, and
then compose a paragraph about their lives on the laptop computer.
(Each page would be put together into a class book for sharing at
a subsequent class.)
Rationale:
This was an opportunity to apply language
skills using the oral and writing modes. This information allowed
high interest sharing amongst the students. Having the information
written gave students a practical motivation to apply computer word
processing skills learned. The book gave the students personalized
high interest reading material from which they could practice
over and over again.
Technologies Used:
Laptop computer
Other Materials:
chalkboard, chalk
Learning and Teaching Activities:
- Students set up their own laptop.
- Teacher introduces the idea of making a class book,
All About Us to the students.
- Asks students what information should be included,
eliciting the following information: Name, country of origin,
length of time in the U.S., information re: family, employment,
hobbies, and summer plans.
- Teacher models orally telling her personal information above.
- Teacher puts stem sentences as prompts on board:
- My name is ...
- I am from ...
- I have been in the US ...
- I have a (husband, wife, children ...)
- I have worked as a ...
- In my spare time, I like to ...
- This summer I plan to ...
- Individuals within the group of students practice completing
the stem sentences. Everyone participates completing at least one
stem sentence.
- Pair students and have students orally compose their paragraphs
talking to their partner using the stem sentences as a guide.
- Students then type and edit their paragraphs.
- Students save their paragraphs to a disc previously taught.
- During the class, photos of students are taken with a digital
camera to be printed in the class book.
The books were printed and collated, distributed and shared
for the last class. The book prompted a lot of talking and bonding amongst the
students within the class.
Evaluation of Learning:
Evaluation is easy with computer use as the teacher can
see while the class is progressing who needs help either with using the
computer or with composing their sentences. You can tell immediately if it
is a syntactic, vocabulary, punctuation or spelling problem, so the teacher
can give individualized feedback. (It is important to have no more than 4 or 5
new computer using ESL students per teacher to allow time for giving assistance.)
It appeared that all students benefited from this activity in the language
areas mentioned above. It also helped further bond the students.
Comments:
The students loved these computer classes, and I
believe the class books will be treasured long after these classes ended.
I thought the timing of these computer classes was an excellent idea.
By May, the winter doldrums sometimes set in, but having these computer
classes in the spring helped pique what might have been waning interest.
The classes and the class book activities were something new, challenging
and very motivating.
*from Technology
Implementation — End-of-Year Report as of June 30, 2003, compiled
by Tony Sebastiano, Director
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