Working Toward Content Understanding

Students developed content understanding about the three regions of the United States that were being studied through three interactive Nearpod presentations.  Each of these presentations was laid out in a similar format.  First, students engaged in a “notice and wonder activity.”  Then, to hook them in, I provided several fun facts about the states they were studying, and asked them to choose a state to visit based on what they read.  This element of choice was carried through the entire presentation, as students responded to questions like “which Midwest Industry could you not live without?” and “Would you like to see a tornado in real life?”  These questions not only checked for content understanding, but allowed students to interact with the material they were learning in an organic way that bred good discussion and a desire to learn more about the topic being studied.  Additionally, in each of these Nearpods, students selected a virtual field trip from a choice of three trips, and then responded to the field trip they chose and discussed what they learned.  These Nearpods were geared towards students asking questions, developing opinions, and forming personal connections to the material being presented.

Powerful Learning Practices

Not only were students given power within the Nearpods to guide their own learning through the choice of a virtual field trip, their choices in the polls, and responses to opinion based questions, but they continued to experience the power of their minds when the unit transitioned into the research phase. The second half of this unit was all about research — students worked in groups to develop Google Slides presentations. Making Google Slides presentations is something my class likes to do in their free time, which is why I wanted to bring it into the classroom. 

In order to effectively complete their research, students were provided with a list of questions to answer about the people, places, and cultures that they would experience if they visited their assigned region.  These questions, though directed at enabling students to access knowledge that coincides with the learning standards, were left intentionally vague, so that students could take their research in a direction that interested them in order to help them learn something they value and will remember beyond the presentations.  Students worked in assigned groups to make the larger presentations, but were given the opportunity to form partnerships within those assigned groups in order to do collaborative research on a topic that was included within the guidelines of the assignment. Once the research was done, students experienced the feeling of teaching their peers something new as they presented their slides and answered questions from the class.

Literacy Skills, including Digital Literacy

Students read to understand quite a lot of information throughout the Nearpods, as they were called to read slides using the Wheel of Names, which randomly generated a student’s name. This is a tool we use frequently to encourage participation from all students. Additionally, students engaged their reading skills as they researched information to put in their slideshow presentation. They wrote their slides in a cohesive way so that the class and their teachers could understand. Also, they practiced their public speaking skills as they presented what they researched and learned for their classmates.

Students utilized online platforms such as Nearpod and Google Slides in order to work collaboratively towards a common goal.  In the Nearpod, they worked together to make choices that informed the direction of their research, such as choosing a virtual field trip and responding to “collaborate boards” in which they shared their ideas and reactions to a particular topic.  Once they began work on their presentation, they worked both in partners (on individual slides) and in a group of eight to nine students (on the presentation as a whole) to develop a Google Slideshow that could be shown to their teachers and classmates as a representation of what they discovered through their research.