My parents have been complaining all summer about the number of lanternflies they have been finding in their backyard. We set up duct tape traps around the most infested trees to try and trap some. Even though we had traps that were successfully capturing some of the lanternflies, we had no idea what relative number we were catching, if any were escaping our trap, what other wildlife we may be hurting, and if anything was eating the trapped lanternflies. I had an idea- what if we could set up a camera and look at the footage to figure out the answers to all of these unknown? I was so intrigued by this idea that I decided to develop an entire unit on invasive species that revolved around the idea of building the perfect lanternfly trap. As a part of my master’s program, I exchanged my lesson plan with two other educators in my program. These educators both had areas of expertise different from mine (elementary education and history education), and both of them are from an area that does not have a lanternfly invasion. This allowed them to look at my lesson from a perspective that I would not have been able to utilize myself. For example, one of these peers gave me lots of suggestions regarding how to make my lesson more accessible for emergent bilingual students, which is not something that I often think about due to there being very few emergent bilingual students at my school. Gaining input from those outside of a situation can often give us a new perspective, lead us down new routes for problem solving, and ultimately lead us to better solutions (Berger, 2016, p. 85).
In order to make my lesson more accessible based on the feedback I received and my own self reflection, I tried to provide for more means of representation, action, and expression in my lesson (CAST, 2018). The specific changes that I ended up making generally involved providing students with more options for how students interact with material and how they show their own learning. Making these changes should hopefully allow all of my students to better engage with this lesson, regardless of any learning differences that might exist. One change that I did not make to the extent that it was suggested was how I intend to introduce the Raspberry Pi to my students. My original plan involved myself showing students how to get their data sensors set up step by step and giving them freedom only in the final step. I received a suggestion to try and instead give students space and time to explore on their own. I researched the problem and found that students being exposed to programming for the very first time need lots of support due to the abstract notion of coding (Kölling, 2016). Technology usage is also not the purpose of this lesson, and I did not want to spend so much time on it that the big ideas got lost. I ultimately ended up reducing the amount of direct instruction a little bit and adding in scaffolding for students to explore a bit more freely. If you are interested in checking out my lesson plan (or its various drafts), click the links below to see the different versions. References Berger, W. (2016). A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas (Reprint ed.). Bloomsbury USA.
CAST. (2018, August 31). UDL: The UDL Guidelines. http://udlguidelines.cast.org/?utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=none&utm_source=cast-about-udl Kölling, M. (2016). Educational Programming on the Raspberry Pi. Electronics, 5(4), 33. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics5030033 Russell, D. (2020). First Draft Russell 811 Innovating Learning Experience Plan [Unpublished manuscript]. Michigan State University. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PkwcUhLNVsYy9r5WwgFjAegeRMl49YbF6PjvjwnwH8I/edit?usp=sharing Russell, D. (2020). Russell 811 Innovating Learning Experience Plan [Unpublished manuscript]. Michigan State University. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WFIEwQV6VYCgUZvdgI4tyESHootIRJe42saWzp5MEV8/edit?usp=sharing Russell, D. (2020). Second Draft Russell 811 Innovating Learning Experience Plan [Unpublished manuscript]. Michigan State University. https://docs.google.com/document/d/16Zbtew1bXliDRRxTmMPblSyREJ-Z1_8JLYnr129FYI4/edit?usp=sharing Russell, D (2020, July 31). Peer Feedback on Lanternfly Lesson [Screenshot] U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2018, August 30). Spotted Lanternfly [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/42810653630/in/album-72157697839962692/
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