TPACK for Virtual Tour

Social Studies Core Corriculum for 6th Grade:

Standard 1
Students will understand how ancient civilizations developed and how they contributed to the current state of the world.

Objective 1 Explain why physical geography affected the development of early civilizations

a. Identify the major physical features of the regions where ancient civilizations flourished.

Content: The content that I will be to view and discover four different ruins and the cultures that built them. The students will learn about the Roman, Mayan, Egyptian, and Chinese civilization and how these different cultures contributed to the world we know today. The students will be able to compare and contrast the information that they learned about each particular ruin and the culture behind it.

Pedagogy: The activity will have to be presented in a way that will be helpful to the students' learning. I believe that this can be achieved by having the children study one group of ruins at a time. Once the students have gained an understanding of all the four ruins then we could compare and contrast them so they will not confuse which information goes to what ruin. Also, in order to make the activities more meaningful I will try to focus the lesson on the students by asking if they have been to these ruins, if they would like to go, what they think they would find there, etc

Technology: The Technology that I will be using in the lesson is Google Earth and the Internet to go to these websites:

http://www.enjoyguatemala.com/ruins.htm, http://www.italylink.com/woi/buildings/colosseum.htm,

http://www.eyelid.co.uk/pyramid3.htm,

and http://geography.about.com/od/specificplacesofinterest/a/greatwall.htm

These websites will help the children answer the questions that they are give about the ruins and their civilizations. These technologies will help the children gain knowledge and understanding of where the ruins are around the world.

Virtual Tour Plan

Location	Activity	Google Earth Content
1. Tikal, Guatemala	The students will be asked to go to this website: http://www.enjoyguatemala.com/ruins.htm and answer some questions about the Mayan Ruins by reading the article. Then after looking at all the other ruins the students will compare and contrast the four different ruins.	A picture of the Mayan ruins in Tikal, Guatemala
2.Rome, Italy	The students will be asked to go to this website: http://www.italylink.com/woi/buildings/colosseum.html and answer some questions about the Colosseum by reading the article. Then after looking at all the other ruins the students will compare and contrast the four different ruins.	A picture of the Colosseum in Rome, Italy
3.Giza, Egypt	The students will be asked to go to this website: http://www.eyelid.co.uk/pyramid3.htm and answer some questions about the Pyramids of Giza by reading the article. Then after looking at all the other ruins the students will compare and contrast the four different ruins.	A picture of the Pyramids of Giza in Giza, Egypt
4.Northern China	The students will be asked to go to this website: http://geography.about.com/od/specificplacesofinterest/a/greatwall.htm and answer some questions about the Great Wall of China by reading the article. Then after looking at all the other ruins the students will compare and contrast the four different ruins.	A Picture of the Great Wall of China in Northern China
Details of image overlay / path / polygon:	I am going to use an image overlay in my Virtual Tour Plan. The pictures will be of the different ruins that we are discussing and will be placed on their location on the globe. That way when the students are looking for where to go in the tour, they will be able to easily locate the four areas.

Boa Constrictor

TPACK in Digital Storybook

My students will use a digital storybook to better their understanding and comprehension of text. They will read and analyze the poem "Boa Constrictor" by Shel Silverstein. The children will read the poem and interpret what the speaker is saying. They will imagine the emotions of the person within the story and then will draw pictures that go along with the words. These pictures will express the emotions of the speaker. Then the children will transfer what they drew into clay models of the snake and the person. As they make these models they will be able to make different connections as they realize that they have felt some of the emotions that the poem expresses, such as frustration and anger. These clay models will then be used as the pictures that go alone to the reading of the poem. This shows that the content in the lesson is understanding and analyzing poetry.

The pedagogy will be helping the children see the importance of poetry and helping them to see interpret the text within a poem. Before the activity will take place, I will ask my students to think about the poem. Is the girl really being eaten? How does the poem make you feel? Do you think the poem has a deeper meaning then what is read in the text? Could you write a poem like this? What makes this poem so popular? These questions will be asked in a discussion about poems that will take place before the activity.

The technology that will be used in this lesson is PhotoStory. We will use this technology to create a digital storybook as a class. Also, will will get music from freeplaymusic.com that will fit our story and help inhance the emotions that we would like to express within the story.

Story Board

Here is the story board that we came up with:

Using TPACK in a Science Lesson

In our Science lesson, the content that we focused on was observing and identifying leaves of plants and their different parts. The children are asked to observe the many different types of leaves and explore different parts of the leaves. They looked at them in detail and were asked to identify one of them and draw it. This helped them to be able to identify many different types of leaves and how they come from different plants.

Pedagogical knowledge within the lesson would be to the ability to discuss the differences in plants and leaves. These differences would include the different parts of a leaf, a proper way to identify and observe the leaf, and the numerous plants that it could come from. This discussion would have to be in terms that the children would be able to understand so that they could be involved in the conversation and participate. It is important to include the students in the discussion so maybe by asking questions or having them lead different parts of the discussion would help to get everyone involved.

Our lesson used two different technologies to help teach. The first one was the leaf identification website which helped the children find what type of plant leaf they had and what plant it came from. This technology allowed the students to answer questions which enhanced their observational skills. The second type of technology we used was a microscope. This allowed the students to find details in the leaves that they might have missed otherwise and to further their understanding of the different parts of a leaf.