Making It Stick - Achieving Student Achievement

CEP 815 Making It Stick on Prezi

"Shape It Up" Lesson Plan Implementation

The lesson plan I created utilizes a Smart Board in conjunction with an activity I found on the SMART Exchange website called “Shape It Up.”  The activity is a one or two-person game that is played on a Smart Board.  The goal of the game is to identify specific shapes in each picture.  I chose this activity because it is an interactive, realistic and exciting way for children to learn.  It requires minimal instruction and supervision by providing it’s own control of error, which in turn promotes independence.  Originally, I didn't plan on using any verbal instruction.  However, after reviewing the Common Core State Standards for the lesson, I decided it was necessary to verbalize the names of the shapes during the lesson.  Although a silent demonstration would have been plenty guidance for the students to know how to do the activity, it would not have been adequate information to cover one of the standards for the lesson.  Standard K.G.2. states “Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size.”  Because the vocabulary is a component that is necessary to achieve student mastery of this standard, I also added into my lesson plan a requirement for the students to state the name of each shape as they find it in the picture.  The control of error remains because each partner has to agree on the correct name for each shape.  In the event that neither partner knows the name, I designated two other students in the classroom as “go-to friends” for assistance if necessary.  

I implemented my lesson plan last week and overall, I am pleased with the outcome. There are 21 kindergarten students in my class with a wide range of ability levels. For the lesson, the children sat on the rug in front of the Smart Board while I demonstrated the “Shape It Up” activity.  The first page of the activity has a circle, square, rectangle and triangle on it.  Each of the shapes is labeled with a brief description of it’s characteristics written next to it.  I read the words on the page and continued on to the first “picture” page.  Each “picture” page contains several pictures of objects that have the same shape as one of these four basic shapes.  I demonstrated how to choose the correct shape and drag it over to the corresponding picture.  There are a few other variations of the “picture” pages throughout the activity so I briefly demonstrated how to do some of them.  The children seemed interested in the lesson and eager to have a turn.

Upon completion of my demonstration, technology became the main facilitator for the activity, which gave me a chance to observe the students interacting with the shapes. It was satisfying to see that my behaviorist approach for teaching, was working.  By demonstrating some examples first, the students knew their expectations and the directions for how to do each page.  One unfortunate constraint of this activity is that only two students were able to use it at a time.  Because of this, some students had to wait so long for their turn that they forgot what to do on some pages, which made me very grateful for the control of error the activity provided.  Any time a student tried to put a shape in the wrong spot, it would bounce back.  They were unable to move on to the next page until all of the shapes were in the correct spot.  There were not many questions that the students asked me because of their requirement to ask the two “go-to friends” before asking me. The only type of questions I ended up having to answer were questions about the directions.   It was fascinating to watch the children problem-solve without my assistance.  They consulted with their partner about the characteristics of a given shape and then put it in the correct spot on the board.  The Smart Board  and the “Shape It Up” activity provided an interactive and effective learning experience for the students.  This is a tool I will definitely use again in the future.