Assessment Planning

I am performing a formative assessment which allows me to assess the students’ understanding during and after the lesson. The students will discuss why they chose to sort the given resources with each other (there is no right or wrong way), the teacher provides basic information, the students need to think about how to acquire more on the topic, and then discuss what they learned with their classmates. To meet the needs of all students, the teacher provides guidance to all students and allows students who are English language learners or students who have learning or physical disabilities to work with partners.

Instruction Plans

My goals, objectives and outcomes are stated in a way that is understandable to others. If someone needed to unexpectedly take over my lesson, they would know what the students need to do and how the students need to accomplish it. “The student will be able to differentiate renewable and nonrenewable resources by sorting images of natural resources. The student will be able to analyze the effect limited resources have on the environment.” This is the state standard but in terms that are easier to understand and I explained how students would accomplish the standard.

Instruction Design

The students get to explore materials without instruction to allow them to process some information on their own. The teacher can listen for vocabulary being used to assess what students may know about the topic. My lesson is set up to allow students to explore the topic, the teacher will explain the subject matter, and then the students will further explore the topic before classroom discourse. Students are using higher order thinking skills throughout most of the lesson; this is primarily a student driven lesson. The students engage in discourse as they sort resources with each other (there is no right or wrong way to sort materials), the teacher provides basic information, the students need to think about how to acquire more on the topic, and then discuss what they learned with their classmates. The teacher provides guidance to all students and students who are English language learners or students who have learning or physical disabilities can work with partners. Half of the lesson allows students to research information so I feel it aligns nicely with research based understanding of technology integration.

Assessing Prior Knowledge

My lesson contains questions in the beginning of the lesson that allows the teacher to discover if there is any prior knowledge. After assessing my students’ prior knowledge, I would know how in depth the instruction needed to go before we went on with the rest of the lesson. Knowing about students’ prior knowledge would provide a better idea of how time consuming this lesson could end up being. Time management is very important when creating lesson plans.

Copyright and Fair Use Checklist

Things to Check for When Using Someone Else’s Work

If the work is protected
• The owner of protected work may:
o Reproduce his/her work
o Build off of the original work
o Distribute and/or publish work
o Publicly perform and/or display work

There is a law that applies strictly to educators; The TEACH Act
• This distinct set of rights applies only to work used in the classroom
• It applies to all mediums
• Teachers still need to follow copyright and fair use laws

When using material/work for classrooms:
• Materials/Work should be limited to:
o Single chapters
o Single articles
o Several charts, graphs, and/or illustrations
o Other small parts of work
• Copyright notice and/or proper citation(s) should be included

Other’s work should be:
• Used Sparingly! Your own work should be used when at all possible.
• Cited properly at all times.

Other’s work should not be:
• Used for commercial purposes without approval

The punishment for deliberate infringement can be up to $150,000.

Copyright crash course: the teach act finally becomes law. (2002, November 13). Retrieved from http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/teachact.htm

Harper, Georgia K. (2001). Crash course in copyright. Retrieved from http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/cprtindx.htm#top

Preventing Plagiarism

Schools and teachers should try to instill pride and honesty in their students from a young age. Children also need to be taught what cheating and plagiarism is from an equally young age. If students do not know or understand what plagiarism is, they will not know how to prevent doing it. Teaching students to cite sources as they begin to learn and use research skills is the best time to teach citation. Teaching students that using another person’s work without giving them credit for the work they did is cheating and stealing; most students would not like for this to be done to them. By providing students with concept maps or graphic organizers as they research, this can help prevent students from using full sentences or paragraphs of other’s work. It may be beneficial to encourage younger elementary students to concentrate on the basics of citation and work towards a specific style as they get older. By teaching students these skills slowly and at an age appropriate level, it should become habit by the time they are out of elementary school.

Works Cited:

Mitchell, S. (2007, April/May). Penguins and Plagiarism: Stemming the Tide of Plagiarism in Elementary School. Library Media Connection , 47.
http://libproxy.nau.edu:8724/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?hid=102&sid=9a486bbf-f968-4c7d-983c-1e90fc8a8895%40sessionmgr110&vid=7

Royce, J. (2010). Detecting Plagiarism. Retrieved February 28, 2011, from Robert College of Istanbul: http://portal.robcol.k12.tr/Default.aspx?pgID=130