What are Vertebrates?

What Are Vertebrates?

By Amberly Gfeller

Mini Project Two

June 12, 2012

Technological Knowledge (TK)

I will be teaching my students how to create a blog in order to share with their parents, grandparents, or any other friends or family that are interested about the lessons they are learning.  They will learn a science lesson about vertebrates.  I will first go over how to create their blog at blogger.com by first creating their name and their privacy settings.  When creating their names we will use a name that will not easily identify them to not put them in danger.  They will also set their privacy settings carefully in order to only let the people they approve see their information.  I will also go over that students cannot directly copy from a website or book, they must say the ideas in their own words.  Before working on their own, students will understand the basics of ethical use and Internet safety.  

Technological Content Knowledge (TCK)

In order to help each student learn more about vertebrates using technology, I will have my students explore and search nationalgeographic.com for animals that are vertebrates.  After they do this they will then use the program Kidspiration, KidPix, or another similar program to create webs about what they learned while exploring nationalgeographic.com.  They will then upload and post this web on their newly created blog.  If they wish, they can post pictures of vertebrates on their blog as well.    

Content Knowledge (CK)

Before the lesson the class as a whole will begin making a KWL chart in order to see what the students already know about vertebrates.  We will then fill in the “W” column with what they want to know.  Also, before students get their own computer and time to begin creating their project we will use the Promethean board to look at animals that are vertebrates.  We will also read many books pertaining to the lesson.  After we have read about and looked at these vertebrates we will create a diagram as a class on the Promethean board so all students can work together to create a chart about what makes a vertebrate and what does not. 

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)

After the students have created their web about vertebrates and posted it to their blog I will ask the students what they have learned about vertebrates since they began this lesson in order to finish filling in the KWL chart.  I will ask them what their favorite vertebrate is and if they have any vertebrates living in their house.  Do they have any non-vertebrates living in their house?  The students can work in groups and use their created webs to figure out the answers to the discussion questions.   

Pedagogical Knowledge (PK)

We will then reflect on why it is important to know about vertebrates.  Why does it mater if an organism is a vertebrate?

Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK)

The students will then each get a chance to show their web, graph, or chart to the class over a projector and explain why they picked to demonstrate vertebrates the way they did.