Taken from http://lessonstream.org/
Jamie Keddle’s LessonStream.Org Lesson Plans with Technology at its Best By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed. School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica Sunday, April 3, 2016 Post 247
Hadn’t it been because of Prof. Michael Krauss, I would not have been lead to finding the wonders behind Jamie Keddle’s project: LessonStream.
This site “is a
collection of high quality lesson plans that incorporate technology. One of the advantages to the collection is its searchability” (Krauss, 2016). No doubt Jamie Keddle’s website is a great contribution for teachers worldwide. What does a lesson plan include in Keddle’s page? When you start paying attention to how the lesson plan it is structure, you find lots of information that can allow you make the most sensible decision to start using it with your learners. First, we are provided with an introduction or antecedent to what the situation to be discussed is. Secondly, the language level, the learner types, time allotted, type of activity, topic, language covered, and materials are set. Immediately after this, we are provided with a
lesson plan outline, which can be subdivided into two parts. Lots of information to make a decision on using the activity or not is supplied, as it can be noticed.
Though this seems to be a lot of information that is supplied by the site, the page has more features to help the user. For instance, if one clicks the “language levels” tab, one gets the suggested level for the lesson plan one is exploring. If the third tab is clicked, one is supplied with the types of students who can profit from the plan. Furthermore, time is also suggested for us teachers to calculate the amount of time that needs to be taken from our regular classes. The remaining tabs help us to identify –in other lesson plans- all sorts of main activities, language aims (adjectives, verbs, etc.), various topics, and materials include more information about the lesson plans included on the webpage. This last tab seems to be confusing since when one hits materials one expects –perhaps- to see what extra elements are required for a lesson plan. Yet, the best of the tabs in LessonStream are language levels and learner type. As someone who enjoys art and artistic manifestations, let me choose a sample lesson plan to explore in detail: Scream by Munch. 1
Name of lesson
2
URL of the lesson
3 4
Tab under which I found this lesson Brief description of the lesson
The Scream http://lessonstream.org/2012/05/06/thescream/ Materials – Image lesson plans Language Function: To talk about past events and ongoing actions that were taking place during those past events
Objective: To infer from pictures what people had been doing before To focus learners on the description of 5
Reasons to chose this lesson
What can be hoped from learners to 6
be able to do after finishing this lesson
past events focusing on finished and ongoing actions It is expected that by the end of this lesson, learners can be able to discuss past events in terms of finished actions and ongoing ones during that event.
To sum up, LessonStream is a great repository of lessons plans. These plans can be worked on just the way they are, or –better yet-, they can be adapted to suit one’s objectives with our students. This is –for sure- one of those websites that must be stored for later use in one’s teaching practice with technology.
References Krauss, M. (2016, March 3). Exploring Web 2.0. Retrieved from Exploring Web 2.0: https://webdisk.lclark.edu/krauss/cwis/exploring20web/syllabus2b.html#day5