This was the first time I have included more technology than just PowerPoint and the use of the ELMO in my intern classroom. I was a little nervous about incorporating the use of PLICKERs into my lesson. PLICKERs allowed to students to be more interactive in answering the questions then me just calling on one student at a time. It is also a quick way for me to see where students are struggling and how to plan for further instruction. This is the first time, I have used PLICKERs and I was not sure how the students were going to react to the lesson. None of the students in my class had used it before, so I had to explain it to them before we could start the activity. Many students seemed a little confused about how to hold the card when showing me the answer. I believe that this was the point in the lesson that I should have had a few sample questions to show the students how to correctly use the cards. This would have helped cut back on the confusion and the students would have been able to answer the questions with the correct answer they chose. The students were really interested in using the cards and PLICKER and during the whole activity they kept asking me what App I was using and how they could get it. I came across a few problems using PLICKERs in my lesson. The first problem was that you could only use it for one-answer questions and on the student’s packet there was one question that required two answers. I was unable to use the cards to answer this question. I just talked about the answers with the class. This did not help my final data because I had to go back into the pack and see what answers the students chose. There were also a questions where the students had to write the main idea of the passage down. Since I was unable to use PLICKERs for this, I had a class discussion to answer this question. The other problem I had was that after each question, I had to calm the students down in order to move on. No matter what I tried, the students were just too excited to be using the cards to show me their answers. I believe that is a good thing because they were interacting with the teacher and all students were excited to share their answer whether it was right or not. If I ever did this lesson again, I would find a passage with all multiple choice questions that are only answered with one answer. I would also use the PLICKER cards during my PowerPoint. I would make the passage at the end of it into multiple choice questions. This would be a good way to introduce the students to using the cards. I could make sure that all students are understanding text structure before moving on to the passage. The use of a smartboard in the classroom would have been a great addition to my lesson. I could have used this to play text structure games with the students who were struggling with finding the text structure in a passage.
Throughout the lesson, I could see different levels of engagement with all my students. Some students were really into answering all the question and using their PLICKER cards, however, I have one little boy who just was not into it at all. He does not enjoy school and does not interact with the other students. Since this lesson was a review of text structure, I am not sure the use of technology helped them learn any more than they already know. The use of technology in the classroom is something they are not use to because there is not much to use at my intern school.
Throughout the lesson, I could see different levels of engagement with all my students. Some students were really into answering all the question and using their PLICKER cards, however, I have one little boy who just was not into it at all. He does not enjoy school and does not interact with the other students. Since this lesson was a review of text structure, I am not sure the use of technology helped them learn any more than they already know. The use of technology in the classroom is something they are not use to because there is not much to use at my intern school.