Lesson Plan for Implementing NETSSTemplate I

(More Directed Learning Activities)

Template with guiding questions

Teacher(s)
Name Brittnay Schuster

Position Teacher
School/Distri
ct Mountain View High School

E-mail bschust3@students.kennesaw.edu

Phone 678-735-0807
Grade
Level(s) 9th

Content Area Language Arts

Timeline 3-4 50 minute class periods

Content Standards: Gwinnett County AKS

1. acquire and use accurately general academic and domain-specific words and phrases,
sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness
level; demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when considering a
word or phrase important to comprehension or expression
2. determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases
based on grades 910 reading and content
3. demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization,
punctuation, and spelling when writing
4. Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions
5. use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or
shared writing products, taking advantage of technology's capacity to link to other
information and to display information flexibly and dynamically
6. analyze seminal U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (e.g.,
Washington's Farewell Address, the Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt's Four Freedoms
speech, King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Nelson Mandela's Nobel Peace Prize
Speech, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights), including how they address
related themes and concepts

Brittnay Schuster, Kennesaw State University November 2017

NETS*S Standards:
1. Creativity and Innovation
Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative
products and processes
using technology.
a. apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes
b. create original works as a means of personal or group expression
2. Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively,
including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of
others.
a. interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a
variety of digital environments
and media
b.
c. develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with
learners of other cultures
3. Research and Information Fluency
Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.
a. plan strategies to guide inquiry
b. locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information
from a variety of sources and media
c. evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the
appropriateness to specific tasks
6. Technology Operations and Concepts
Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and
operations
a. understand and use technology systems
b. select and use applications effectively and productively
c. troubleshoot systems and applications
d. transfer current knowledge to learning of new technologies

Brittnay Schuster, Kennesaw State University November 2017

Overview
Through discussion, research, and reflection students will learn about the different ways in which small
acts of bias, prejudice, and discrimination can lead to genocide. This is relevant because they are
currently learning about the Holocaust and they are connecting their knowledge to modern examples of
the different levels of hate. They will first use Quizlet to create their own study deck using the terms
listed here. They will include the word and image on one side of their study deck and the definition and
a sentence on another. The second step will allow students to read and analyze a simplified version of
the The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (allowing ELL students to understand each article in
the text as I lowered the Lexile Level using Newsela). They will then find an article on the news
platform of their choice about a current event that violates one of the human rights listed in the article.
They will post a summary of their article on our Learning Management System, Desire2Learn (D2L).
Then they will create a blog post on EduBlogs reflecting on one of the human rights from the article that
is important to them and explain why that is important to them based on their cultural experience.
Students will conclude the lesson by responding to another classmates blog post.

Essential Questions

Essential Questions:
1. How do our cultural beliefs and experiences shape how we value human rights?
Rationale:
Students will care about this topic because it directly connects to their personal experiences and what
they are currently learning in class. Students have demonstrated that they enjoy getting the opportunity
to reflect on their personal experiences as they relate to the material. This lesson will allow students to
safely open up about their experiences and they will be able to connect the material they are learning
about to current events that violate similar human rights.
Guiding Questions:
1. What are human rights?
2. What has been your experience with bias?
3. What has been your experience with prejudice?
4. What has been your experience with discrimination?
5. What has been your experience with bias-motivated violence?
6. What other events have occurred that would be considered genocide?
7. What role does society play in our cultures?
8. What role does society play in establishing our personal belief systems?
9. What kinds of things lead to personal biases and prejudices?
10. How can a small act of bias lead to something worse?

Brittnay Schuster, Kennesaw State University November 2017

Background Knowledge
Students will need to already know about the general details of the Holocaust. They have already
learned the basics of using Edublogs and they are aware of the classroom expectations for writing,
publishing, and responding to personal reflections. Students will bring personal knowledge of their
cultural background to the lesson as well. Students will build a vocabulary foundation through creating
the Quizlet study deck.

Assessment

Product or illustration of learning:

Students will engage in a collaborative exchange of ideas through the use of D2L and Edublogs.
Students will demonstrate their vocabulary foundation by creating a study deck to help them learn the
significant terms that they need to understand for the unit.
Generation of new knowledge:
Students will generate new knowledge by researching current events that have violated human rights.
They will expand their knowledge by reading and responding to their classmates discussion posts about
the current events that they found. Students will further their generation of new knowledge by reading
and responding the blog posts of their classmates.
Formative or Summative:
Students will take a formative assessment over the vocabulary terms to help me determine their
understanding of the terms. They will take this quiz on D2L using the assessment feature. This quiz will
allow me to differentiate their level of progress before moving on to the next activity. Students who
receive below and 80% on the assessment will engage in an individualized learning activity allowing
them to make better connections to the vocabulary.
Students will post a discussion post and blog post and will be evaluated using this rubric (Churches
2009).
Differentiation:
Differentiation will be guided by formative assessment data. Students who do not receive and 80% or
above on their vocabulary formative assessment will participate in an enrichment activity where they
will practice with their Quizlet study deck in four different modes and then they will retake the
assessment. Students will also have differentiation because they are allowed to choose an article about
human rights violations that is of interest to them personally. As an additional element of differentiation,
students who would prefer to make physical notecards instead of using Quizlet will have the option to
do so.

Brittnay Schuster, Kennesaw State University November 2017

Rubric: I will be using a Blogging Rubric designed by Andrew Churches (2009) that can be seen by
clicking here

Resources

Technology that supports student learning:

The chosen technology for this lesson supports student learning in a variety of ways. First, it allows for
formative assessment and differentiation for students. Through the use of Desire2Learn I am able to
quickly gather and analyze the necessary data to determine if students are ready to move on to the next
step in the assignment or if they need more remediation to ensure they are able to fully understand the
next material. There are built in ELL and preferred learning style supports with Quizlet and SpeakIt
because both of them offer a aural element for students who struggle with reading or are currently
learning English. Edublogs support student learning because it makes the learning public (to the class)
and collaborative in that students must read and respond to their classmate's posts--thereby constructing
their personal and non-personal cultural knowledge. Newsela supports student learning because it
provides the same text at a variety of Lexile levels to ensure understanding no matter where students are
with their reading comprehension skills.
Digital tools and resources:
1. Quizlet: This tool is a great learning tool for students at all levels because it allows them to
generate study material in their own terms and it is available on the go so students who need to
study the material can download the app on their own device and review the material on their
time. Additionally, this tool will read the words, definitions, and sentences aloud.
2. SpeakIt: This tool is used in conjunction with the Quizlet app for English Language Learners.
Because part of their curriculum is building new vocabulary, it is important that they understand
what the words mean. Using this tool that will translate the text of a page into a variety of
different language by reciting it aloud, students can build context for the new vocabulary by
creating the context for the word in their native language.
3. Desire2Learn(D2L): I will use D2L to assess the students understanding of the vocabulary
terms. Students will have two opportunities to take this quiz. If they receive an 80% or above on
the quiz the first time, they will be prompted to move on to the next activity, the current event
research and discussion. Students will complete their discussion post via the discussion board on
D2L.
4. EduBlogs:Students will construct a blog post in which they reflect on one of the human rights
that is meaningful to them personally. They will use this platform to post their reflection and to
respond to their peers reflections. This will allow students to write about and reflect on their
own culture and the cultures of their peers.
5. Newsela: I used Newsela to provide differentiation for ELL students. Newsela allows you to
change the Lexile level for a particular news article. So I am using an on-level version of the
article for high level students and a lower-lower level version for students who have
demonstrated that they struggle with reading comprehension and for the ELLs in my class. The
article can be found here The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Brittnay Schuster, Kennesaw State University November 2017

Previous technology skills:
1. Blogging: Students will already know how to use EduBlogs as we set them up during a previous
lesson and they have since posted several assigned reflections since then. They are also familiar
with the expectations of blogging and commenting as we established those through discussion
posts on D2L at the beginning of the year and have continually reinforced those skills since then.
2. Discussions: Students already know how to navigate D2L to get to the discussion board. They
also know that the protocol for the discussion is to use the title of the article they found as the
subject, they know the expectations for posting, and they know the expectations for responding
to their peers.
3. Quizlet: Students already know how to create a Quizlet study deck because they have done this
kind of assignment for previous units. I chose to go this route for the vocabulary because of the
positive results that were seen from their previous use of this tool. Students also know how to
use their study decks to prepare them for formative and summative assessments.
4. Informal research: Students will complete informal research by finding a current event article
that connects to the topic of human rights violations. I consider this to be informal research
because they are not using scholarly sources for this, they are using mainstream news media
sources.

*A full list of references is included at the end of the lesson plan

Instructional Plan Preparation

Needs: Based on an informal class discussion at the beginning of the unit, I was able to determine that
that the class needs a better vocabulary foundation in order to be successful in this unit. This
information is what prompted me to assign the vocabulary peice of the assignment. From this same
discussion I was able to note that students enjoyed discussing their personal experiences as the pertained
to each concept. This allowed students to gain a better understanding of the people in their class and
how everyones experiences are different and similar. There are some students who have consistently
performed poorly on reading comprehension assignments due to lack of skill or lack of language
acquisition. This is what prompted me to provide the Declaration of Human Rights article at varying
Lexile levels.
Interests: Students have, on multiple occasions, demonstrated a strong interest in reflecting on their
personal cultural experiences. They have also demonstrated a range of skills when it comes to
generation connections between the class material and current events. However, as a whole--students
have all demonstrated interests in recognizing connections between the historical context and modern
examples.
Knowledge of foundation: Students have completed assessments and activities throughout the year to
demonstrate their knowledge, or lack of knowledge, of technology tools, vocabulary, reading
comprehension, and academic discussion including blogging.

Brittnay Schuster, Kennesaw State University November 2017

Student Difficulties: Some students will struggle with trouble-shooting for their blog posts. Since
students will be guided by D2L for their activities, I will be available to provide one-on-one assistance
for students who need additional help. Some students will struggle with contextualizing the historical
events and making connections to their own culture. To assist with making connections, I will ask some
guiding questions to help them think about their connections on a broader level. Some students will
struggle with reading comprehension. To assisting struggling readers I am able to differentiate the
Lexile levels on the Declaration of Human Rights article.

Management

Classroom management strategies: The most important classroom management strategy for this
particular unit is one that was established at the beginning of the year. Students were taught that this
class would require them to engage in controversial and/or sensitive issues. They have had several
opportunities to practice appropriate communication practices throughout the year. Additionally,
students have been taught the implications, consequences, and rewards of engaging in appropriate
digital citizenship activities. Finally, I have established a classroom climate of positivity,
encouragement, open-mindedness, and good vibes. Students have received a variety of rewards and
consequences for their behavior over the year and I have kept track of this behavior using Class dojo.
Student work environment: In order to ensure equitable access to technology for all students to be
able to complete this assignment, students will all have three days in class to complete this lesson.
Students will be allowed to work on this from home if they choose but they will not be required to do
so. Students will work on this assignment individually--but they will engage in multi-platform
discussions and reflections with all their peers who are in my class. Opening the dialogue to all students
in my class, instead of just by class period, I am able to allow students to make connections and learn
more about a variety of different cultures.
Potential technical issues: Some potential technical issues include loss of internet or malfunctioning of
D2L and EduBlogs
Technical issue resolution: I will make copies of the Newsela article in case D2L does not work,
students will still be able to read and annotate the article. I will make a class set of each article at each
Lexile level. If Edublogs does not work, I will have students complete their blog post either on paper (if
the internet isn't work) or on a Google Doc that they can then copy and paste into their blog post. If D2L
doesnt work for the discussion portion of the assignment, I will have students discuss their articles in
their groups instead of on D2L. Additionally, if I need to provide more class time for students to finish
the assignment, I can do that.

Brittnay Schuster, Kennesaw State University November 2017

Instructional Strategies and Learning Activities

Research based instructional strategies: This lesson incorporates a variety of Quality Plus Teaching
Strategies. These are strategies that my district expects teachers to use regularly in their instruction. The
digital guide linked here provides a variety of tools based on which strategy they complement. The
Quality Plus Teaching Strategies that are included in this lesson are: Assessment, Nonverbal
representation, Vocabulary, Summarizing, Collaboration, Literacy, Questioning, Background
Knowledge, Comparison and Contrast, and Technology.
Learning environment: The learning environment I have already established in my classroom
promotes open-minded and inquisitive conversations about potentially controversial issues. Students
have already engaged in a variety of discussions where they had to use their skills with dialogue to
discuss their ideas. Students have practiced respectfully disagreeing with their classmates and they have
practiced providing constructive feedback and asking socratic questions.
Teacher Roles: I am only going to function as a facilitator for this lesson. It is important for me to be
able to read and respond to my students discussion and blogs post to ensure they are implementing the
appropriate and expected protocols for posting and discussing the content for this lesson. It is also
important for me to be able to join in on their personal reflections so I can reiterate the safe space that I
have created in my classroom.
Student Roles: Students will play the roles of: explorer, teacher, and producer. Students will play the
role of explorer by finding and evaluating/summarizing/connection a current event that violates one of
the human rights they learned about through reading the Declaration of Human Rights. Students will
play the role of a teacher because through their informal research and summarizing of current events,
they are teaching their peers about a particular event and how it violates at least one of the human rights
listed in the article. This allows students to create a better understanding of the different human rights
and the world-wide violations of those events. Students are playing the role of producer because they
are going to produce a blog post that connects what they learned about human rights to their own
personal experiences.
Higher order thinking: Students will have to address higher order thinking by generating connections
between historical violations of human rights, and current events that violate human rights. They will
also have to generate connections to their own cultural experiences that shape how they feel about
certain human rights.
Technology supporting teaching: The technology used in this lesson will allow me to play the role of
facilitator instead of instructor. I will use D2L as the platform for students to begin their instruction.
When students begin working on their Quizlet decks, discussions, and blog posts I will be able to
circulate the room to help individual students who need assistance with any part of the lesson.
Activities: Students will complete the following relevant, and meaningful learning activities and tasks
1. Students will build upon their knowledge of human rights by reading the primary source
Declaration of Human Rights at their appropriate Lexile level.
2. Students will generate connections between historic violations of human rights and current
violations of human rights.
3. Students will reflect on their own cultural experience by choosing one particular human right
that is important to them based on their cultural background. They will then reflect on the
cultural upbringing that led to their valuing of that particular human right.

Brittnay Schuster, Kennesaw State University November 2017

Building knowledge and skills: Students will build new knowledge by reading and responding to their
peers posts on how their cultural experiences shaped their value of a particular human right.
Student use of digital resources: Students will use D2L, Quizlet, Newsela, and Edublogs to construct
and build upon their knowledge and understanding of human rights and how our own personal cultural
experiences shape our values of human rights.
Facilitation of collaboration: I will facilitate collaboration by setting up a discussion board for
students to summarize their current event. I will also have already set up the expectations and protocols
for posting and responding via Edublogs.

Differentiation

Content: Differentiation of content will occur by adjusting the Lexile levels of the Declaration of
Human Rights article using Newsela. Students will also have access to a chrome extension called
SpeakIt if they would prefer to hear the article, or if they need it to be read to them in their native
language.
Process: Differentiation of the process will occur with the vocabulary portion of this assignments.
Students will complete a formative assessment to help determine their understanding of the new
vocabulary. Students who score an 80% or above will be allowed to move on to the second portion of
the lesson. Students who score below an 80% will be directed to complete additional practice activities
and take the quiz again before moving on to part two.
Independent and co-learning: Students will be completing independent and collaborative learning
tasks. Students will work individually on the vocabulary, discussion, and blog assignment on their own.
The learning will be collaborative in that students will each find their own article on a modern human
rights violations. Students will then read the posts of their classmates to create a variety of content for
students to learn about current human rights violations.
Extensions: The enrichment portion of this lesson will occur for students who score below an 80% on
their vocabulary formative assessment. They will be asked to complete three different learning tasks
(matching, multiple choice, fill in the blank, or game style) to review the words, definitions, and
examples of each of their vocabulary terms. Students who finish their work early will be asked to read
and comment on additional blogs or discussion posts to give them more opportunity to practice with the
appropriate skills of responsible digital citizenship.
Assistive technology: No assistive technology would be needed for this lesson. If I did need to use
assistive technology I could use Screencasify to read the article aloud to students.

Reflection
Did students find the lesson meaningful and worth completing?
In what ways was this lesson effective?
What went well and why?
What did not go well and why?
How would you teach this lesson differently?)

Brittnay Schuster, Kennesaw State University November 2017

Closing event: The closing event for this lesson will be a socratic seminar in which students reflect on
the process and content of the lesson. Students will voice their opinions and connections related to the
various articles of the Declaration of Human Rights. Students are already familiar with the protocol
and expectations for participating in a socratic seminar style discussion. These questions will be used to
guide this reflective student discussion. My process for answering the questions listed above would be
to observe the socratic seminar and the discussion/blog posts from students.
Reflection questions: Students will be able to reflect on their experience by answering the questions
listed here to prepare for their closing socratic seminar.
Reflective Questions
1. What did you learn about human rights through completing this lesson?
2. What were you able to learn about appropriate dialogue through this activity?
3. What were you able to learn about your cultural experience through this activity?
4. What did you like about this lesson?
5. What would you have changed about the process for this lesson?

Closure

Advice and reflection of implementation:

Students found this lesson meaningful and worth completing. I was able to determine this information
by reading students discussion posts, blog posts, and listening to their socratic seminar discussion.
Students reported that they enjoyed doing something that they were able to connect to their own
background. The students also enjoyed being able to talk about their beliefs and their cultures in the
context of what they were learning. Through talking to some parents, they also enjoyed the lesson
because they were able to discuss their culture with their children. The lesson as a whole went really
well. The only thing that I would really change would be that next time I would maybe give students
some articles or news sites to choose from. Many of the students ended up choosing the same or similar
articles which limited the number of different current events students were exposed to. My advice to a
teacher who might want to use this lesson would be to make sure that you have well established rules,
protocols, and/or expectations for completing discussion and blog posts. I think that the time spent
earlier this year establishing rules, protocols, and expectations of this type of activity really allowed the
discussions to flourish beyond the basic report style posts. Students were all very supportive and
interested in the ideas of their peers. They were all respectful of each others opinions and cultural
backgrounds. Additionally, I would make sure that you model appropriate socratic seminar discussion
practices. Because students were already familiar with this, they were able to spend more time
discussing the content rather than establishing the protocols.

Brittnay Schuster, Kennesaw State University November 2017

 References

Curches, A. (2009, February 1). Blog Journalling Rubric [PDF]. Educational

Origami.https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8xj7bypOb9RVV9JTjVuUXpJbEE/view?usp=

sharing

Quality Plus Teaching Strategies - Digital Guide. (2017). Retrieved November 13, 2017, from

publish.gwinnett.k12.ga.us/gcps/wcm/connect/gcps_public_content_enus/qpts

United Nations. (2017, March 8). Primary Sources: Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Retrieved November 10, 2017, from

newsela.com/read/primary-source-universal-declaration-human-rights/id/27533/

Brittnay Schuster, Kennesaw State University November 2017