Integrated Lesson Plans -- Reflecting on What I Know #3

     Go ahead and break out the coffee, ladies and gents, because planning a good integrated lesson plan takes time, energy, and a lot of creative brain power. When planning an integrated lesson plan that will work with your students consider these things:

• Does the length of the plan correlate with the attention span of your students?
• Are you using all available resources, including those not associated with the computer (i.e. books, newspapers, magazines, and journals)?
• Are you using technology in a way that will motivate and encourage students to learn? Do students use a computer as a useful tool in solving problems?
• Do you have specific objectives that are the ultimate goal of your plan? Do they cover all of the instruction for the unit? 
• Do the objectives match the functions of the computer? In other words, can the software that you are planning to use help the students learn what you want them to learn or accomplish what they set out to accomplish?
• Is the problem presented to the students motivating and based on real-world events, issues, or phenomena?
• Have you considered how students will gather data?
• Have you planned for activities before, during, and after computer use (especially in the case that not every student has access to a computer the entire class period)?
• How will your students present the results of their research?
• How will the objectives be assessed? Do the students understand how they will be graded on this project?

All of these are small pieces that can be put together to build a great integrated lesson plan. Units following the NTeQ model can be used across disciplines or in the confines of one specific subject area. Teachers can also collaborate and create a lesson that extends from one classroom to the next.

     One of the most important parts of any lesson plan is the objectives. Objectives are vital to planning and lesson development because they set clear goals for the students and the teacher. With a specific result in mind, a teacher can generate a unit full of tasks that are put in place specifically to help students meet that goal. Traditional behavioral objectives or cognitive objectives are both excellent as long as they cover all the instruction for the unit or lesson (including the technological portion). Any winning team is always working towards a common goal!

     Encouraging your students to engage in the processing of information is much easier if the problems presented relate to them. Problems based on real-world events, issues or phenomena are more meaningful to students as they work with data familiar, or at least interesting, to them. Problems become more relevant as they are brought to life before the students. 

     As we discuss integrated lesson plans, allow me to point out that you do not have to use different lesson plans when you want your students to use computers. Using the NTeQ model when forming your plans and units makes this especially easy. As you form problems, look at how using a computer can help your students meet the objectives. Match your objectives to computer functions and let the learning begin! Look at your objectives. Think about how you would achieve these goals as a student. Once you have figured out which processes you need to complete the objective, you can match it to one or more computer functions that will allow for those processes. For example, if objectives include words like calculate, draw, graph, and sort, OR if you would need to do these things to reach your objective, they would be easy to match to a spreadsheet. Build the use of technology right into your lesson plan and improve on it each year as technology advances.

     I am asked, "Can I use a computer for every objective or lesson?" My answer to that is -- yes! Using a variety of digital tools will keep students interested while teaching them the necessary skills that they need to be successful in this digital time that they live in. Computers take on many forms that are great tools to be used in the classroom. Desktop computers, laptop computers, e-readers, digital cameras, smart phones, cps receivers, iPads, graphing calculators, personal response systems, interactive whiteboards, printers, scanners, science probes, and flash drives are only the beginning of a very long list of possibilities. If the teacher is willing to do the proper planning, technology can be integrated throughout the school year.