Lesson Plans
| Using Software for Lesson Planning When Patty Black wrote her weekly lesson plans on Friday afternoons, she typically jotted down a few page numbers and shorthand notes to herself, and that wasplenty to jog her memory about the lesson when it came up the next week. During her sixth year of teaching, Patty had a student teacher for the first time. Carla Rivera’s enthusiasm for her newly chosen career bubbled over, and she asked question after question throughout the day. When Carla asked Patty about why she never saw tech- nology mentioned in Patty’s lesson plan book, Patty thought she had a ready answer: There was really no need to write it down because they usually just worked on the computers if they had time, and then she had students either play an educational soft- ware game as a reward, or type up whatever they were working on using a word processor. But Carla’s never-ending questions started Patty thinking: Should she be putting more thought into what her students did with the computer? This novice teacher had caused her to rethink her reasons for using technology.Patty thought about the upcoming unit on state history. She sat down that evening and found four websites with sections that seemed appropriate for her students. For the first time, she jotted down the websites in her plan book, drawing a line from the objective of the lesson to the website to show its connection. She even decided to try using a lesson-planning software that the district had purchased and offered train- ing on last year. Now, where was that email? |
Questions
