Chaos

In this lesson the students will explore fairness and order as they experience relationships with others in their school and learn about rules in other schools. The NCSS standards state, “they develop an increasingly comprehensive awareness of rights and responsibilities in specific contexts.” The students will do research to compare old laws with new laws, compare their school rules to other schools and will create fair classroom rules for their class.

Analyze Learners

This is a fifth grade class. There are 22 students, 14 boys and 8 girls. All of the students are from military families. The students are learning a unit in social studies about examining the purposes and characteristics of various governance systems. They are learning how nations attempt to resolve conflicts and seek to establish order and security. The students have already had discussions about laws and why we have them. In the previous week, the students signed up with epals.com and were assigned different students around the world to communicate with as an epal for the year.

The students in this classroom are fairly well behaved, but there are some behavior issues. The students do not always follow the posted rules. There is one student with a learning disability in my classroom. He has a para-educator who assists him with his learning goals.

State Objectives

Students will:

1. Request a written copy of their epal’s classroom rules.
2. Discuss (in groups) the commonalities and differences of the rules that they found from their school and their epal’s schools.
3. Verbally state at least 2 reasons why they feel the rules could be different or the same.
4. Create a 2 minute presentation (within their group) using show.zoho.com showing some rules that they found to be similar and some rules that were different.
5. Verbally present their presentation to the class.
The students will individually request the school rules from their epal. After a week, the students will meet in their group and discuss the rules that they were given. The students will then make hypothesis’ about why they would be similar or different. The students will them choose which rules should be included in their presentation. The students will then work collaboratively in their groups to create their presentations. The groups will be given a week to organize their presentation and then will present their conclusions to the class. This will be an ongoing history lesson. This lesson will be followed by a making the rules lesson plan.

Select Instructional Methods

Methods

• Group Learning

The teacher will discuss rules from the past and why they may have been important. She will show an old rules poster and ask the students why they think that the rules were different a long time ago.

The students will have collaborative group discussions about their epal. The students will discuss where their epal is from and the possible reason behind some of the rules they may have found.

The students will work together in small groups to create a presentation regarding their findings.


• Individual Learning
The students will individually make connections with their assigned epal. They will ask questions and respond to any questions asked. They will develop a year long relationship with their epal.
Media

• The teacher will introduce epals by demonstrating the registration process to the students using her laptop and the projector. The teacher will show a video of different classroom rules throughout the country.

Materials

• Laptop computer, projector, video clip, paper pencils, internet resources.

Utilize Media and Materials

Preview the Materials: The teacher should ensure that she has introduced government and laws. The students should have at least an idea about why we have laws, so that they will hopefully be able to make the connection between rules and the classroom functioning smoothly. The teacher should know how to register for epals. She should have set up an account with epals and already know how it will work.

Prepare the materials: The teacher should ensure that all of the materials are available before the lesson. She should ensure that the projector is working and that the link for the video is pre-loaded. She should ensure that the internet access is available for the day and that the website search engine that she wants the students to use is written on the board.

Prepare the environment: The computers should be turned on and ready for use. They should be checked to ensure that they all have access to the internet.
Prepare the learner: The teacher should give the students a few moments to calm themselves and prepare for the lesson. This is an ongoing lesson. The teacher should review the previous lessons by asking questions at the beginning of the lesson. The teacher should ensure that all of the students state that they understand the directions that she is giving before moving on.

Require Learner Participation

Each student will have an assigned epal. Each student will email their epal and ask them to share their classroom rules. Each student must provide a minimum of 2 written rules from their epal to contribute to the group discussion and group presentation. Each student will be required to write in their own words why they think the rule that they are presenting would help maintain classroom order. Each student will write why they think that some of their rules were the same.
Each student will create a minimum of one slide in the presentation. Each student will verbally discuss their slide during the presentation.
The student with the learning disability will verbally tell the teacher the reasons that he feels that his rules were important. He will be given more time to complete his presentation slide. His para-educator will assist him where needed.

Evaluate and Revise

Evaluate student performance
Content: Were the students able to register for epals? Did the teacher have to assist them with the registration process after the demonstration? Were the students able to create a document requesting information from their epals? Did the students follow directions?
Were the students able to make connections between rules and classroom organization?
Were the students able to navigate through zoho to create a powerpoint? Was their powerpoint organized? Did it follow the format of the unit being studied?
What was the difficulty level of the excel bar graph? Were the students able to work together to complete the activity? Were the students able to follow the written instructions to step by step create the graph? Did the students work well within their groups? Did they take turns on the computer application?

References

http://www.epals.com
http://www.zoho.com
http://www.educationworld.com