My Technology Enhanced Lesson

On Monday, I introduced the class story of the week, "The Plant Castle." Before reading the story to my class, I told them that the story had six words that they might not be familiar with (arboretum, cacti, succulents, orchid, papayas, and cacao). I created a PowerPoint presentation with slides for each of these words that I showed to my students. After showing my students the word slides, I had slides displaying each of the four reading strategies we use to identify unfamiliar words. Following the reading strategy slides, I had the sentence each vocabulary word was in on individual slides. When I got to a sentence with one of those words, while reading the story, I held up my computer screen with the corresponding slide displayed. Students could see the sentence text and then guess what word they thought went in the sentence. Following the sentence slide, I had a slide with the correct vocabulary word and then a slide with the definition of the word. We repeated this process six times. By the end of the lesson, the students knew how to read and correctly pronounce each vocabulary word and they also knew the definitions. I think this lesson went well. However, I originally intended to use an LCD projector to project my Powerpoint. This didn't actually work out because my mentor teacher wants the students sitting at the reading carpet when they are being read to and the only place to project the LCD screen would be on the whiteboard in the front of the room (this is because the classroom doesn't have an overhead/LCD screen). But, I used my laptop that has a 15 inch screen and held it out so all the kids could see it. I think the Powerpoint really enhanced the lesson and helped my students learn their vocabulary words. I'm glad that although I had to have a last minute change of plans, my lesson still worked out in the end.