Technology Integration Plan: Emily Dickenson

To implement technology into a lesson plan, I used a former lesson plan from last semester. While this lesson plan is structured for students to stay in their seats and work alone, I was able to accommodate changes to make the lesson plan more fun and student oriented. The teaching strategies and technology added to this lesson plan allows students to work together with other students and technology to help them understand Emily Dickenson and her writings better. Within this lesson, students will be asked to identify and understand Emily Dickenson as a person, and then apply what they learned about her to her poems. Then they will have to cite and use textual evidence to support their claims of how Emily Dickenson’s life related to her poems. Once they have a clear understand of Emily Dickenson, they must determine a theme to her poems, which students must look for on the Internet. (I’m nobody, who are you?? And Pain has an element of blank). Then the students must be able to answer the why her poems seem so bleak and negative, using prior knowledge learned in the beginning of the class.

First, students will be placed into groups and work on computers to find a biography of Emily Dickenson. Once they find a biography on Emily Dickenson, they will use Word Document and cite characteristics of the poet. Once they have a good a good amount of descriptors, they will find a citation website (like easybib, or citation machine) and cite the website they were using. When they are completely finished, they will present their findings to the class. When the students are finished presenting their findings, they will be tasked with finding the two poems I’m nobody, who are you?? And Pain has an element of blank, on the Internet.

Once the students find the two poems, they will read them out loud in their groups. The students will then work together to figure out the main theme of each poem. Once they have a general idea of the themes, they will present them to the class, in which I will record their themes on the Smartboard, which will stay up for the remainder of the class, to see if their themes changed, if at all. If themes are repeated, I will put tallies next to them. If they have any questions about their themes, I will be answering them during this time.

Once the students are cohesive about the themes, they will use their prior information that they found on Emily Dickenson to create a three to four pargraphs, on word document, explaining the relation to her life and the poems themes. Within their groups, students will choose a scribe, who will write the paragraphs. Once done, the students will print out their paragraphs. Once printed, each other student, will take turns editing the paragraphs, either to fix grammar, spelling, or flow. They will then, rewrite their paragraphs, and edit them one more time. Finally, students will then edit their final changes into their work, print out a final copy, along with a works cited page, and hand it in, along with their drafts.

Having completed this, they will have completed the CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.1, which is to cite textual evidence to support an analysis of what the text says. Also, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.2, which is to determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text. Finally, they will have accomplished CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.5 which would have students understand how to analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text. Using technology, students will be able to be creative and innovative, and use their critical thinking, problem solving, and decision-making skills. Students will be able to communicate and collaborate with each other to bounce ideas off each other and edit each other’s work. Using the computers effectively and productively, students will be able to allowed to work on their research and information fluency.

After this lesson, students should be able to make the connections between Emily Dickenson’s personal life and her poetry. Using information listed in her biography, which they must search for on the Internet, they will have a basic understanding of her life. Then students will find her two poems and draw connections between them and her life. Students then will be able to write cohesive paragraphs explaining their connection to her personal life and her poetry, citing the information from her biography and her poetry. They will write their paragraphs, editing them each time, and finally hand it in with a works cited page. Students will then have an understand of Emily Dickenson and her poetry. 

Final Spreadsheet

Helping Students with Writing

As an English Teacher, I’ve come to find that there are not many technologies we could use in our classrooms, besides websites. I have stated in previous blog posts, that I would be wary about students using their laptops in my classroom. So the least I would be able to do for them is give them a good list of resources that my student would be able to use. I remember, back when I was a student in high school, every year, we would have that one creative writing paper.

The paper would be able to be about anything, but it had to be fiction. As a creative writing minor now, you could imagine I was always happy about said assignments, but my peers, not so much. They would always struggle with coming up with a simple idea. As a teacher, I want this process to be as enjoyable as possible. So what I would add to their sheet of resources is a website called the Fiction Generator.

It is exactly what the title says it is. Only this is one of the best ones I have seen. This gives the student a lengthy plot summary, without writing the story for them; it just gives the student information about a situation. Not only does this generator involve character quirks, but also interesting settings and titles for the paper (something I always had trouble with). What I liked most about this generator was that in the description, it used very large vocabulary words, so not only is it helping the student to write a very interesting fiction story, but it is also helping the student expand their vocabulary.

I personally believe this would be a great tool for a teacher to give students. It will allow them to not only explore different writing tools, but also help expand their vocabulary knowledge. 

Teaching English With Technology

While searching for different technologies that should be, would be, or have been used in the English classroom, I came across a fabulous website called Teaching English With Technology. This is a fantastic resource that all English Education Teachers should know, and also share with their students. While looking around on the website, not only did I find many resources, and links to go along with them, but above all the sources and link, it gives a description as to why you should use this type of technology. For example, there were citing help, lessons and activities, and multimedia help. It honestly is a fantastic website for a teacher or a student.

I remember when I was in high school, in the beginning of the year, the teachers would outline their syllabus and explain briefly about a research paper, and list some of the databases we should use. Then come the time of the research paper, they would throw us students to the sharks and we would be on our own for citing, databases, and research. This would always be extremely stressful because I would never know which database would be good or not. This website, Teaching English With Technology already has good databases listed, and good citing websites to help student do everything correctly.

As stated before, this is also a wonderful tool for teachers to use also. It gives different websites for English teachers to use that helps with lessons, interactive white boards, e books, and so much more. It really is a great resource to everyone in the English classroom. I am actually extremely happy that I stumbled upon such a wonderful and helpful website. Not only am I going to save it for future use as a teacher, but also I believe I will continue to use it during my college education. 

The Movie Taboo in the English Classroom

 During our high school careers, I’m sure plenty of us have read Shakespeare, and then have seen a clip from a movie that was made on the same story. Why aren’t more classrooms doing this? I always thought, and still think, it is a great way for students to see the action of the story played out by actors, instead of in their mind. Or even, when students are reading plays out loud, I don’t think I was ever in a class where a reading of a Shakespeare play was read enthusiastically.

It was always monotone, the fight scenes, if played out, were always boring and silly. That is because these high school students are becoming young adults, where popularity is the most important thing to them, and actually acting out an old play in front of the whole class would be embarrassing to them. So why no cut out the embarrassment and have students read the play and watch a scene or entire movie adaptation?  

Maybe, after the movie, the students could write a short paragraph or two about how they envisioned the characters, action, or setting to be different in their mind. Have them talk about the differences. Let them make connections. It always seemed as if showing the movie adaptation of a book that was read in the classroom was almost taboo.

I remember as a student, my class would be for a movie adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and my teacher would quickly dismiss the subject. Why should we be afraid of this? We shouldn’t at all! It gives students either a better understanding of the book (which I felt commonly happened to me) or it gives them a visual of what they just read. We should be afraid of movie adaptations, we, as teachers, should embrace them as another way of teaching our students. 

Collaborative Program for Group Papers

Have you ever had one of those group projects in High School that the entire group needs to write a paper? All of your group members would grumble, and procrastinate and then quickly meet up before the paper was due to finally type it and hand it in. Well there is an alternative program, quite like Google Documents, called Will You Type With Me. This program allows students (after making a login name) to share a document, work on it together, and be able to chat, almost like an instant message, within the document. This way, students will be able to share ideas, and comments about the document they are working on. This is extremely helpful because students are able to work on the document together, so all the ideas of the group are shared in one setting and in one document.

I think this would be a fantastic tool for students to have because group projects are never an easy thing to do. Which member has extracurricular activities, which member cant get meet because their parents cant drive them, group projects always come with excuses.  This program, Will You Type With Me, allows students to meet virtually and accomplish the paper without having to cancel appointments, schedule meeting times, and such.

This is something that would be so beneficial to students. I think high school students should have access to other student’s emails, just as college students have. It would make group projects less daunting and much more easier. Plus with the program Will You Type With Me it would make group papers in the English classroom much more bearable. It is difficult for high school students, especially freshman, sophomores, and juniors to get parents to drive them to a destination to work on a paper. So this program would be very helpful for the non-driving student. 

E-Readers in the School System

With the holiday season upon us, and the commercials and advertisements bombarding viewers, I can’t help but think about E-readers for the classroom. I could remember, back in high school, in my class of 20 plus students, five students would always be with out a book. My teacher would have to scramble to get those five students a book before we were too deep within said book and the poor students would be lost. So why not have student’s get/be given e-readers?

With the tiny budgets school have, and the lack of funding we are getting, should we scrap the books and give our students e-readers instead? They e-readers would be packed with text books and language arts books that wont have missing pages or ripped covered that they will not be charged for, even though they weren’t the ones who ripped it. While this seems like a good idea, I can’t imagine it would ever work out, without some kind of system.

Students, especially in high school, are clumsy, careless, and forgetful. So if their e-reader breaks, they should then have to pay out of pocket to get another one. This would teach them to be responsible with their work, grades, and their technology. Having e-readers would allow students to always have the information at their finger tips, to not flip back and fourth between the pages of heavy text books. To be able to find that one quote that they need for an essay. While this would be extremely beneficial, it would be a drastic change in the school system—to go from text in every class, to a completely text less school. Also, the added benefit for students would be the reduced backpack weight. Suddenly with out five heavy textbooks and the two to three language arts books, the back pack would be extremely lightweight! 

Remixing Technology and Curriculum

For this canvas remix, I tried to mesh the lesson plan of “Bad Case of Bullying” with “The Changing Ideologies of Race, Culture and Demographics”. I felt these two meshed because they sometimes go together. It seemed that the lesson plan of race, culture and demographics, went well with bullying because sometimes in school student will face not only bullying but racial bullying. I felt these two would mesh well, so I decided to remix our canvases together. While I did take out some widgets from the previous canvas, not because I didn’t like them, it was strictly because the canvas kept warping and movie and it was very difficult to work with. So I eliminated two of the “more information” widgets and the video widget, because they were making it difficult to work with. I felt that the rest of the information would be able to stay to get the point of racial bullying across.

Here is the link to the remixed canvas