Cross-curriculum Lesson Development

Web 2.0 Cross-curriculum Lesson Development By Michael D. King Most school curriculum models use a traditional format for learning in which individual subject matter is taught in isolation. Integrating the content creates a curriculum that is both challenging and meaningful to students. The process of developing cross curriculum interdisciplinary lessons using a Blog or Wiki as a learning resource medium has several stages, including identifying the learner outcomes, selecting a theme, developing a curriculum web, establishing multimedia resources, creating activities, and designing assessment. This process for developing cross-curriculum lessons for Web 2.0 collaborative network promotes effective teaching practices by bringing together elements of curriculum resources that interact with one another into a coherent, workable framework. The model below will be used as a guide in for developing and integrating multiple resources into a collaborative Web 2.0 cross-curriculum lesson.

The Web 2.0 Cross-curriculum Lesson Step One Identifying Outcomes

Use State and National Standards to Identify Outcomes and Select a Theme

Step Two Establish A Theme

Step Three Aligning Outcomes

Selecting a Universal Theme for the CrossCurriculum Web 2.0 Lesson

Use a Curriculum Web to Organize Content and Align Skills

Step Four Establish Resources

Use Search Features and Create Media Resources

Step Five Lesson Design

Develop a Lesson Plan & Create a Cross-curriculum Web 2.0 Lesson

Step One: Identifying Outcomes In this process, the teacher selects the outcomes that should be taught in each content area. Outcomes should be selected based on the prescriptive needs of the learner and the desired outcomes of the district. By focusing instruction on essential learning outcomes and skills, alignment activities can play an important role in improving student achievement. The selection

of outcomes is based on the principle that teachers should facilitate what they expect students to learn. This process require teachers to define clearly the learning outcomes that students are expected to master during the facilitation of the lesson. For example, a fifth grade teacher reviews his or her list of expected learner outcomes and finds that students will be assessed at the end of the school year in the following geography areas, language arts, math, and history. HISTORY: The student will:  Examine the reasons for the problems faced in and the results of key expeditions of Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and England (e.g., Columbus, Ponce de León, Magellan, Coronado, Cortés, Hudson, Raleigh, and La Salle) and the competition for control of North America. GEOGRAPHY: The student will:  Identify graphs, charts, diagrams, and other sources and representations, such as aerial and shuttle photographs, satellite-produced images, the geographic information system (GIS), encyclopedias, almanacs, dictionaries, atlases, and computer-based technologies and construct and use maps of locales, regions, continents, and the world that demonstrate an understanding of mental mapping. LANGUAGE ARTS: The student will:  Communicate through a variety of written forms and for a variety of writing for a specific audience or person.  Demonstrate appropriate practices in writing by applying standard English conventions to the revising and editing stages of writing.  Write research reports about important ideas, issues, or events that: a. frame questions about an idea or issue to direct the investigation. b. establish a main idea or topic. c. develop the topic with simple facts, details, examples, and explanations to support the main idea. d. use a variety of information sources, including speakers, firsthand interviews, reference materials, and online information. MATH: The student will: Apply geometric properties and relationships and use measurements within the metric and customary systems to solve problems in a variety of contexts. 1. identify and describe the basic properties of figures (e.g., two or three-dimensionality, symmetry, number of faces, types of angles). 2. find the perimeter of simple polygons and area of a rectangle (e.g., use 1-inch tiles to build rectangles of different perimeters and areas). 3. use the appropriate units and tools to estimate and measure temperature, distance, length, weight, and angles. 4. convert basic measurements of volume, weight and distance within the same system for metric and customary units (e.g., inches to feet, hours to minutes, centimeters to meters).

The skills listed above would then become the priority in designing the cross-curriculum Web 2.0 collaborative lesson. These selected outcomes will become a part of the curriculum web in

Step Three after a theme for the lesson has been selected. The outcomes selected will also be a reference guide when using search features. Identifying outcomes helps in the overall design of the cross-curriculum lesson and will support the identification of content for the facilitation of the lesson.

Step Two: Selecting and Developing a Theme The next step in developing a cross-curriculum Web 2.0 collaborative lesson is to review the outcomes matrices and to select a theme for lesson development. For an interdisciplinary lesson to be successful, the theme must allow for many different areas of exploration and should relate to some facet of the students’ lives so that it will capture their interest and give the collaborative lesson a real-life application. When the curriculum connects with the students’ lives and experiences, they are more likely to internalize what they learn.

The following criteria are helpful when selecting a theme: 

The theme should have high student interest.

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The theme should connect students’ lives to the world outside the classroom.

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The theme should connect naturally with many subject areas.

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The theme should have high teacher interest.

The theme selected for creating this cross-curriculum Web 2.0 based lesson that will be used as an example will be entitled “The World of Christopher Columbus.” The reason for selecting this theme is that it will provide content for the majority of the objectives identified when aligning standards to state assessments.

Step Three: Developing a Curriculum Web After selecting a theme, the teacher can develop a thematic diagram or web, which is an excellent way to organize an interdisciplinary unit. At the center of the web is the central theme. Spanning outward from it are the supporting themes, which are related to a different content area, such as social studies, language arts, and history. (See figure below) Since the

teacher has already identified the important learning outcomes, those outcomes are added to the appropriate supporting theme on the web. Additional content areas could be added such as math and science. Once identified the content areas and assigned objectives will support unitedstreaming searches for lesson plan development.

CURRICULUM WEB Relative location, direction, latitude, longitude, key, legend, map symbols, scale, size, shape, and landforms.

HISTORY

SOCIAL STUDIES

Evaluate and draw conclusions from different kinds of maps.

Examine the reasons for, the problems faced in, and the results of the Columbus expeditions

THE WORLD OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

Problem Solving

Writing Process

LANGUAGE ARTS

MATH

Writing a Research Paper

Mechanics, Usage

Measurement

Step Four: Establishing Multimedia Resources The next step is for the teacher to identify the skills, activities, and experiences he or she will use in the instruction of the learning outcomes and to design appropriate assessment strategies for evaluating them. This can be accomplished through Google creative common searches for multimedia content using video, pictures, slide shares and text documents as resources.

This process first requires the creation of folders for downloadable resources. These folders would include a single folder named for each resource. For example, the teacher would create one folder for videos, and additional folders for images, text resource files and clip art. The end result of creating folders and downloading resources will prepare the teacher for the next step in interdisciplinary lesson design.

STEP FIVE: DESIGNING AN CROSS-CURRICULUM WEB 2.0 LESSON The next step in the process of developing an interdisciplinary lesson is to use the curriculum web, to design a Web 2.0 collaborative lesson that correlates all the specific learning outcomes.

The first course of action is to write a master lesson plan. The master lesson plan should include all of the following elements: the presentation of the necessary background materials, a list of the skills necessary for the successful completion of the lesson, the project or activities, a review or reteaching, a conclusion that ties every lesson within the cross-curriculum lesson together, and a final assessment. After the master lesson plan is developed, the individual content can be embedded into the design of the Web 2.0 lesson. The Web 2.0 cross-curriculum lesson plans should include the lesson’s title or type, the learning outcomes or objectives, the steps necessary for executing the lesson, the length of time in days needed to complete the lesson, and a list of the necessary resources. After the teacher has developed his o her Web 2.0 cross-curriculum lesson plan, a procedure for placing content onto the Wiki or Blog Website should start with the introduction of content and how this content will interrelate with the theme of the lesson.

Designing Activities Another area for which teachers are responsible in the planning process is designing activities that support the desired learning outcome of the lesson. Activity structures are the backbone of all lessons and determine, along with delivery statistics, the amount of learning that will occur. How the activity is structured determines both teacher and student behaviors during the lesson. Whenever teachers make decisions concerning activity structures, the following three points must be determined: (1) how long the activity will take, (2) how the activity fits within the context of the lesson, and (3) which element of the lesson as a whole will follow the activity in order to support new learning. Additional variables to be considered by the teacher in the design of activity structures include: methods for how the knowledge will be reinforced, determination of how the skills will be attained, and instruction on how to design future activities that support a continuous flow in the learning process.

Designing Methods of Assessment A performance assessment can evaluate students who are demonstrating their skills by performing certain tasks, or it can evaluate products that students have produced to demonstrate their knowledge. Performance assessments can be activities such as science experiments and lab procedures, essays, speeches, computer programming, and so forth. Constructing performance assessment rubrics and applying these assessment strategies to the interdisciplinary whiteboard lesson will enable students to demonstrate their basic skills through a real-world application.

Before constructing a performance assessment, the designer must decide on the time length for the assignment, which could range from one class period to a week, or even a month for assessments that require extensive research. Next, the designer must select the performance modes which the task will require such as speaking, writing, problem solving, and so forth. The designer must also decide how the students will participate in performing the task, for example, individually, in pairs, or in small groups.

The actual process of designing performance assessments varies depending on the complexity of the task and the availability of time. The performance assessment template outlines the steps necessary for designing performance assessments. The performance assessment template, along with the performance assessment worksheet, will help assessment designers to create their own specific assessments for whiteboard lessons. It should be noted that assessment techniques can be designed by using either traditional or alternative methods of assessment. Alternative assessment refers to new assessment techniques that require students to construct a response to an open-ended problem or task. In the case of both traditional and alternative assessment, the task and the assessment should be closely aligned to the learning outcomes. Copyright © 2008 For more information on digital lesson design go to Tech N TuIt