Web Page Project

www.student.gsu.edu/~ebolton1/animal_wp.html

Project Name: Using a web page to review student’s understanding of different animals and their characteristics.

Description of Learning Goals and Standards:
First Grade
Topic: The Living World: Animals
Standard: Compares various animal groups and how they are alike and different. Identifies groups of animals that have similar characteristics and names the characteristics.
This activity is to be used as a review for a unit on animals. The students will demonstrate their knowledge of different animals characteristics. The students will demonstrate his/her understanding by completing a web page assignment. The web page will have different sites for the students to explore followed by questions to answer. This web page will help tie together the different types of animals studied as well as exposing the students to new pictures of different animals. The students will also complete an activity of categorizing animals and place each animal in the correct “field” via the Internet.


Rational for Technology:
The web page will be used to see photos of different animals and answer more objective questions based on an individual observation. The picture and categorizing game setup on the web page is very useful and will help the students think about categorizing the animals in a different way. The use of technology for this lesson is mainly for the students to get a more realistic view of animals and ways to observe them in real life.

Description of Lesson Implementation:
This lesson is best used as a review. I would use this in a Science class after/during a unit on animals. I begin by thinking of a beneficial yet useful outlet for the Internet. When working with younger children I think that the Internet is best used for observing pictures that tie all the ideas together. To begin this lesson each student will need a computer, if individual computers are hard to come by it could be completed in a group. The students will begin by pulling up my constructed web page. The class together will read through all the instructions before beginning. The teacher will need to be available for help and observation as there is a lot of Internet navigation included. A worksheet should be provided for the students to answer the questions. I think it could be helpful to use a multiple-choice worksheet especially for younger students. I
1. The students will pull up the web page.
2. The teacher will pass out answer sheets.
3. The class will read through all instructions aloud and make sure everyone understands the entire lesson.
4. The students will begin the lesson by pulling up the first site and answering the questions.
5. The students’ will continue this process until the lesson is complete.
6. The class will talk about what they observed on this lesson and students will turn in his/her answer sheets.

Assessment:
The students will be assessed by their individual performance on the answer sheet. This will help the teacher to better understand if the students understood the navigation of the Internet. The teacher will assess the lesson based on the flow of entire lesson and the student’s enjoyment.

Improvements for next time:
I think this lesson could be improved by including more interactive web sites like the PBS activity. I also think that web page navigation may be a little difficult for first grade students. I might show these same web sites to the class as a whole rather than individual observation.

References:

http://eduref.org/Virtual/Lessons/Science/Animals/ANM0005.html
I found this lesson plan and thought that idea was fun and used it to base my web page activity off of it.

http://animal.discovery.com/fansites/crochunter/australiazoo/08nativesnakes.html
Snake website- Animal planet

http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/games/logic/logic.html
Game

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/PhotoGallery/GreatCats/9.cfm
Smithsonian Institute