Summary
How can digital tools support student learning in the classroom. This lesson takes a more general plan of how to teach bird ID to students and fuses it with more digital tools and a more structured approach.
Lesson Title: Learning About Birds and Birding
Grade Level: 3rd grade
ORIGINAL LESSON PLAN
I understand this is not a traditional lesson plan but it is relevant to what I am currently teaching.
Lesson Redesign:
Accompanying slide presentation: Hostos My Bird Presentation.pdf
| Engage | Display the silhouette picture from the Cornell Bird Lesson.Who can come and point to a bird you can identify?How did you know what the bird was? | Students will come up and point to one of the silhouettes and identify birds. Most commonly hummingbird, duck, geese, cardinal, raptor, crow, owl. Students will say the shape and size. |
| Explore | Then display the silhouette slide with bird names. Share Cornell Video: https://www.facebook.com/cornellbirds/videos/inside-birding-size-and-shape/317473366502185/ | Teacher questions (Students turn and talk, then share as a group): How many birds were we able to id from the silhouette?(after video) Why do you think size and shape are so important in birding? |
| Explain | Display Cornell’s diagram of bird parts. Students compare the bird parts to human parts and come to understand know the parts helps to better describe the bird and better enables you to identify your bird. Focus Bird Handout from Cornell. FocusBird.pdf Students will select a focus bird and complete the front side of the Focus Bird sheet and answer anything they can on the back. If time play bird song heroBird Song Hero: The song learning game for everyone. | Teacher questions:What parts of the bird do we also have?What parts of the bird do we not have?How might knowing the parts of the bird help you be a better birder? Students will use birding ID cards, card sets, and birding books of our local area to pick a bird they want to know more about. Students will draw in detail this bird on the response sheet and answer the questions they can. Students do not have to have all the information. |
| Extend/Elaborate | Display this live bird feed:Live Birds In 4K! Cornell Lab FeederWatch Cam at Sapsucker Woods Distribute bird cards and ask students to try and identify the birds they see. Ask them to categorize it a raptor, song bird, shorebird, waterfowl etc. | Students will spend 10 mins watching the live feed and work with the table group to ID birds. They should focus on size and shape, then color and markings. Alternative feed: LIVE Bird Feeder and Wildlife Cam (4K) Gettysburg PA, over 30 species identified.LIVE Bird Feeder in 4K (Over 50 species observed!) |
| Evaluate | Students create a presentation in Google Slides (earlier in the year we learned about Google Slides and this is another opportunity for them to use their skills) Students will practice presenting to their table group and then the class at the end. | Students will be provided with a template Hostos My Bird Presentation.pdf Spanish Hostos My Bird Presentation.pptx via their science Google Classroom Students will also have two reliable websites for research bookmarked (Cornell All About Birds and the Audubon site.) Students will have access to a model presentation. Make sure to preview template with students. |
I choose to redesign this lesson because I am actually teaching it in my classroom. The original lesson is not written in a lesson plan form but rather describes what could be done. The original lesson provides a strong sequence and numerous resources to guide activities. The original does not provide strong teacher guidance. The redesign marries the sequence with many of the resources found on their websites and adds more structure.
I chose to add numerous digital tools to this lesson. Some of the tools I chose were google slides, google classroom, videos, and live feed streams. These tools will support the multiple learning styles of my students and provide a higher level of engagement. They also provide authentic experiences that we would not be able to have in the outdoor garden at school. I believe these additions are strong because anything computer-based can be translated into numerous languages to meet the needs of the diverse ELL population at my school. Including pictures supports translanguaging. Aspects of computational thinking are embedded in the lesson as well. Students must decompose the task of creating a presentation, the silhouettes are abstractions of birds as they just look at size and shape. Bird identification is recognizing patterns.
Sources: The Cornell Lab, Audubon Society
