Lesson Plan for Implementing

NETS•S—Template I
(More Directed Learning Activities)
Template with guiding questions
Teacher(s)
Name Kelly Cooper

Position Special Education Teacher

School/District Dacula HS, Gwinnett County Public Schools

E-mail Kelly_Cooper@gwinnett.k12.ga.us

Phone 770.963.6664

Grade Level(s) 9-12

Content Area Emotional/Behavior Disorder

Time line Two weeks= 10, 55-minute class periods

Standards (What do you want students to know and be able to do? What knowledge, skills, and strategies do you
expect students to gain? Are there connections to other curriculum areas and subject area benchmarks? ) Please
put a summary of the standards you will be addressing rather than abbreviations and numbers that indicate which
standards were addressed.

There are no state or local content standards for this class. Writing, literacy, and
Content personal reflection are the major elements of this unit. Students will be reading for
Standards information but they will also summarize and analyze different writing styles.
In this unit, students will be addressing their digital identity with a focus on what
they are posting, sharing, and accessing on the internet and how nothing ever
really goes away. They will also be collaborating and commenting on peer work so
positive, constructive, sage interactions are promoted. Students will research and
locate their own resources to supplement the resources they are given. A strong
focus will be on the the “accuracy, perspective, and credibility” of the information
ISTE*S they are using (ISTE 3b). Students will be able to choose how they present their
Standards: findings. { Standards 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, 6a}

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Overview (a short summary of the lesson or unit including assignment or expected or possible products)

This unit was on the news and news media; the focus was on evaluating “news” for accuracy, perspective,
credibility, bias, and the influence that news has on people’s behaviors and beliefs. The idea for the lesson
started after one of my students came in telling us about a crazy article that their mom had read. I told them
how “Back in the day…” there was this email that went around about a tourist waking up in a bathtub of ice
with one of his kidneys removed purportedly to be sold on the black market. After some searching, I was led to
NewseumEd.org. Since we do not live close enough to visit the Newseum, I used some of their lessons to
jumpstart this unit. The unit was broken down into several different sections; students learned about news
sources, how to evaluate news, bias, stereotypes, and briefly discussing propaganda as related to major
events such as the Holocaust and more personal events such as an election. Students had a daily
activity/assessment and then three summative assessments. The daily activities included reading various
articles, finding example articles, research, discussion board posts, an editorial outline, and classroom
discussions.
Day 1: Factitious Activity, ESCAPE concepts and initial article activity
Day 2: Kahoot! review game on ESCAPE principles, Students find an article on their own and complete the
modified ESCAPE worksheet
Day 3: Complete worksheet, class discussion (Why is it difficult to find reliable sources? Why does it matter?
Who or what stands to win or lose by spreading fake news?)
Day 4: Editorials, evaluating editorials
Day 5: Editorial discussion and outline (summative assessment)
Day 6: Stereotypes discussion, finding articles that support the stereotype, discussion board post, comment on
peers for homework
Day 7: Propaganda examples
Day 8: Propaganda research and work on presentation
Day 9: Propaganda examples presentation and begin final writing activity.
Day 10: Wrap up Junk News Writing assignment

Essential Questions (What essential question or learning are you addressing? What would students care or
want to know about the topic? What are some questions to get students thinking about the topic or generate
interest about the topic? Additionally, what questions can you ask students to help them focus on important
aspects of the topic? (Guiding questions) What background or prior knowledge will you expect students to bring
to this topic and build on?) Remember, essential questions are meant to guide the lesson by provoking inquiry.
They should not be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” and should have many acceptable answers.

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 Introduction:
- What different types of journalism are there & how is it tailored to the audience?
- What do you think of when you hear the term “junk news” or “fake news”
- Why is it important to find reliable sourced information?
- What is the purpose of fake/junk news stories? What examples do you know of?
- Why might people be motivated to create fake/junk news? Why might people be motivated to spread
fake/junk news?
- Should there be repercussions for people who create fake/junk news? If so, what should they be? How do
you suggest it be enforced?

Editorials:
- How does journalism convey ideas, thoughts, and emotions?
- Why do people write editorials? Why do people read them?
- What influence do they have?
- What are the possible repercussions of an editorial?

Stereotypes:
- How do labels and stereotypes affect our relationships with people?
- What are the effects of labeling and stereotyping others?
- Are there events in history that were influenced by stereotypes or bias?

Propaganda:
- How can you identify different types of bias and propaganda?
- In what ways does propaganda influence people's opinions and decisions?
- Does propaganda influence your opinions today?
- What is propaganda and how is it used in politics?

Students need to have some basic background knowledge about sharing news via social media; first-hand
experience would be more beneficial to the assignments. It was expected that they had heard the term “fake
news” before. Since it currently comes with a strong political connotation, I chose to use the term “junk news”
as much as possible. Students would also need some historical reference for stereotyping and propaganda.

Assessment (What will students do or produce to illustrate their learning? What can students do to generate new
knowledge? How will you assess how students are progressing (formative assessment)? How will you assess
what they produce or do? How will you differentiate products?) You must attach copies of your assessment and/or
rubrics. Include these in your presentation as well.

Formative assessments:
- Opening fake news game
- ESCAPE worksheet for article they chose
- Stereotype research articles
- Stereotype discussion post and responses

Summative Assessments:
- Editorials Outline
- Propaganda presentation
- Junk News essay

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Resources (How does technology support student learning? What digital tools, and resources—online student
tools, research sites, student handouts, tools, tutorials, templates, assessment rubrics, etc—help elucidate or
explain the content or allow students to interact with the content? What previous technology skills should students
have to complete this project?)

I had a basic plan in my mind for what I wanted to present to my students and I was able to make that a reality
with ideas and resources that were already available to me. I did not have to start from scratch to create all of
these worksheets and find quality articles.

Students need to be able to access their school Google account, complete specific searches (via Google or
Yahoo!), and have a basic knowledge of Google

Technology:
eClass – GCPS online platform for classroom pages
Factitious - http://factitious.augamestudio.com/#/
NewseumEd.org – several of the lessons were adapted from their lesson plans
Newslea.com – collected articles on there for background and also could be assigned for student reading
Kahoot!
Google Docs for the writing assignments
Google Forms for feedback
Google Slides, Prezi, PowerPoint for the Propaganda assignment
Links to various articles

Printed/Paper Resources:
The writing rubric to make sure students were submitting quality writing. Writing Rubric.doc
Various articles (as back up)
Editorial Outline assignment Editorial Writing.docx

Instructional Plan
Preparation (What student needs, interests, and prior learning provide a foundation for this lesson? How can
you find out if students have this foundation? What difficulties might students have?)

The students in my classroom are all served in the EBD program and have affective skill services in a self-
contained classroom. There are no content standards or required testing for my class so we mix real-world
skills, such as managing money or writing a resume, with personal skills, basics like asking for help and
apologizing. I try to plan real-world lessons that my students are interested in or will be able to form opinions
on. Some students require more individualized instruction in the areas of math and reading so I work to
incorporate those elements in to many lessons. These students are best served in a small group setting and
there is a lot of structure to our classroom. My students are in different grades, ninth through twelfth, which
makes the background knowledge a little tricky. I work from the assumption that they have at least basic
exposure to major world events.

Management Describe the classroom management strategies will you use to manage your students and the use
of digital tools and resources. How and where will your students work? (Small groups, whole group, individuals,
classroom, lab, etc.) What strategies will you use to achieve equitable access to the Internet while completing this
lesson? Describe what technical issues might arise during the Internet lesson and explain how you will resolve or
trouble-shoot them? Please note: Trouble-shooting should occur prior to implementing the lesson as well as
throughout the process. Be sure to indicate how you prepared for problems and work through the issues that
occurred as you implemented and even after the lesson was completed.

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 For my classroom, I have less than 10 in every class, so my students will be working independently or in pairs.
For larger classrooms, there should be a mix of individual and group work.
Students will have their own Chromebook and per normal classroom practices, when in use they will be turned
so that screens are towards the front/inside of the class.

Troubleshooting: The first thing I prepared was making sure that the Chromebooks were plugged in every day
and were on before class started. I had paper copies of all the articles, including options students could choose
from, ready in case the internet is down. I also had a draft post ready to go with links to articles. While not
ideal, it reduced the amount of time students needed to find articles on their own. For the editorial lessons, I had
links posted to the editorial pages of three local newspapers and five national news agencies with a balance of
conservative, neutral, and liberal leanings (based off the chart from the Pew Research Center). I had paper and
pens ready for students if the internet was down and they could not access eClass or Google Docs.

Instructional Strategies and Learning Activities – Describe the research-based instructional strategies you will
use with this lesson. How will your learning environment support these activities? What is your role? What are the
students' roles in the lesson? How can you ensure higher order thinking at the analysis, evaluation, or
creativity levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy? How can the technology support your teaching? What authentic,
relevant, and meaningful learning activities and tasks will your students complete? How will they build knowledge
and skills? How will students use digital tools and resources to communicate and collaborate with each other
and others? How will you facilitate the collaboration?

I tried to use a variety of learner-centered instructional strategies. Even though we did not technically work in
groups, our classroom is very cooperative in nature. When there are only three students, you can only have
one group. My students learn a lot when they work together.
The first thing I used was a game to get the kids hooked. It helped put them in the right mindset but also helped
me gauge where students were with the basic ideas. I was just encouraging students and facilitating the
discussion after we finished. Reading the articles allowed for some basic annotating and summarizing where
students had to carefully read the material and analyze it.
Since most of my students dislike writing and this class is supposed to be encouraging, we had many
discussions throughout the unit. Students were able to talk, bounce ideas off each other, and (respectfully)
challenge other’s ideas. I feel like the discussions were the most successful portion of the unit plan. Students
also did presentations to show what they felt were good examples of propaganda. This part of the unit also
included the analyzation of images where students were critically analyzing them and their purpose. Every
student had different examples and reasoning so students were exposed to additional material.
The online discussions allowed students to collaborate with each other.
As the teacher, I was ready to facilitate the discussions both online and in class. I had questions ready in case
they were needed. I also moderated the conversation to make sure students were no interrupting others and no
one was monopolizing the discussion.

Differentiation (How will you differentiate content and process to accommodate various learning styles and
abilities? How will you help students learn independently and with others? How will you provide extensions and
opportunities for enrichment? What assistive technologies will you need to provide?)

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 Students were able to pick several of the articles that were used in this lesson. They could pick articles that
they are interested in and I prepared articles at a less difficult reading level in case students struggled. One
student also uses assistive technology for writing and asked to give his response orally for one assignment
so I allowed that.
Students were allowed to create their Propaganda Examples project using whatever medium they
preferred. Since some of the work may have needed to be completed at home, students were able to do it
without technology. Students could use Google Slides, Prezi, PowerPoint, display board, or other visual.
Since there is a significant amount of reading involved in this unit the use of the Chromebooks was
imperative. Students were able to use the following Chrome extensions. These three options were
introduced previously in this class and already installed on students school Chrome accounts; they were
Just Read (reduces visual distractions on the webpage), Read Aloud (reads the articles aloud) and Diigo
(digital annotation capabilities). Every student used at least one of these extensions, most put on
headphones and used Read Aloud. Students were not allowed to use TL;DR which summarizes articles.

Reflection (Will there be a closing event? Will students be asked to reflect upon their work? Will students be
asked to provide feedback on the assignment itself? What will be your process for answering the following
questions?
• 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?)

After the units, I have my students fill out a Google form similar to the ones that many of the KSU professors
use at the end of modules. This gives me quick feedback from students about what they liked and disliked
and suggestions for making the unit better.
Next time, I would like to add a rubric to grade the discussions that we had. We do not give any type of effort
or participation grades so I will need to develop a rubric for quantifying this.
Next year, I plan to spend more time on this unit. I felt that some of the discussion was stifled due to time
constraints. I would also like to do a “virtual chat” next year where students are posting on discussion
questions and responding to each other live but without any talking in the classroom. I could sense a little
frustration from some students when they were not able to explain themselves or the discussion had moved
on before they got a chance to speak.

Closure: Anything else you would like to reflect upon regarding lessons learned and/or your experience with
implementing this lesson. What advice would you give others if they were to implement the lesson? Please
provide a quality reflection on your experience with this lesson and its implementation.
The best advice I can give a teacher who is going to do this is to make sure that you have a basic
knowledge about both sides of some of the more controversial current events. Those are the articles that
my students gravitated to and it helped to moderate the conversation (and play devil’s advocate to really
make kids think) when you understand both sides. It would also be good to have plenty of examples ready
to use in case your students do not relate to some of them.
I enjoyed this lesson and so did my students. This is something that is important in today’s world; so many
people like and share false information without even thinking about it because it bolsters their position.
Everyone needs to critically examine the information that we accept as truth. This is also going to become
more important as social media plays a more dominate roll in elections. I do not think that I would have
been able to do this unit without using some of the lessons that others had created. I think that I did a good
job of taking basic pen and paper activities and incorporating different technology into the lesson. I was
proud of the discussions that my students had, I think that it worked because discussion is a regular
classroom activity. I also know my students very well so I could anticipate and some of the more divisive
comments that might be made and prepare for them. I was impressed by the work that my students
produced and how mature they were; I should have expected this from the beginning.

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