Evolution of a lesson plan

Quite by accident, my partner, Dona, and I have collaborated on a lesson plan that aligns perfectly with National Geography Standard 12, which states, "Students must develop an understanding of the fundamental processes, patterns, and functions of human settlement across the Earth's surface, and thereby come to appreciate the spatially ordered ways in which Earth has become the home of people."

In all honesty, all we initially wanted to do was teach a lesson on Ellis Island. We wanted our students to learn how Ellis Island played a such a huge role in settling the wild frontier of a country still in its infancy. Almost as if by magic, our lesson expanded its scope, moving from Ellis Island to the much larger subject of immigration. So, we divided the class into groups, assigned them a country of origin to study and directed them to find out as much data on how people from that country migrated to America as they could, paying special attention to the migration of different ethnic groups to Wisconsin.

One of the buzz words in education these days has to do with "unpacking" the standards, or the process by which educators - through their subject knowledge and pedagogical training - decide what concepts, facts and ideas should be taught in relation to a specific standard in such a way as to make it meaningful for students. Dona and I did some unpacking, only I'm not sure we were aware we were doing it. At least, I wasn't. Below is a video of an educator who has fully embraced the "unpacking" the standards concept.

We certainly didn't pick a standard and design our lesson around it. We picked a subject we thought would be interesting to students and important for them to study. Lo and behold, there was a standard for that. Essentially, what we did was we spent some time spit-balling ideas, and without us really realizing what was happening, the subject of our lesson grew outward from our initial "Ellis Island" idea. And our collaboration resulted in a lesson plan that I, and I assume Dona as well, feel will be meaningful for our imaginary fourth grade students.

For instance, as part of this lesson, they must find out the history of their family's migration to America and Wisconsin. What could be more meaningful for kids than to find out where exactly they came from? This is their inquiry, and because it is personal to them, this is the kind of authentic learning we, as educators, strive for.

This blog is not meant to be boastful. After all, Dona and I did sort of stumble around until we arrived at our destination, especially since our collective lack of tech savvy slowed the process considerably. It was an interesting collaborative effort, however, especially as we worked Sunday on the Google document version of our lesson together via the Internet from different places. We tried different things, tweaked our ideas some and completely abandoned those that didn't work. And somehow, in the end, we sort of "unpacked" not only the standard that we wanted to address, but also the very subject matter we wanted our students to study.

It was a great experiment in collaborative learning, since a lot of the time, we prospective teachers are taught to group students with differing levels of ability. My first collaboration, with Sandy, was different. She is much more advanced with regard to technology than I, but she took this digital immigrant by the hand and helped me learn to do a flipped lesson via Sophia and a timeline using something called Dippity. And I'm the better for it. But, I also enjoyed working with Dona, because we're both at about the same level when it comes to technology. In essence, we had to pull our team up by its own bootstraps. So, perhaps there are advantages to grouping students together who have different levels of ability and who have similar skill levels.