PowerPoint (Terrific)

     In my technology for teachers class, we were assigned to make a lesson plan using a PowerPoint. This PowerPoint was not supposed to be the traditional PowerPoints that so many of my peers and I have had in high school and in college courses. Instead of making slides with notes, we were to create a fun, interesting and interactive presentation that was used as a tool in the lesson, rather than using the PowerPoint as the lesson itself.
     
My PowerPoint:
My lesson plan was geared towards third graders and was supposed to be the opener to "spanish culture week". Because third graders know their colors and numbers by now, I thought this would serve as a good reinforcement for those things as well as an enrichment activity to teach my students about another culture. 
    
 We needed to include:

• An Anticipatory set: letting the students know what we would be working on/review of old and relevant materials
• Guided practice: interactive teaching/ practicing the material with the students
• Independant Practice: students work through the materials on their own
• Closure (exit slip): a summary of what we learned in the lesson

     The anticipatory set was a review of colors in numbers in English  This is simple and quick because the students have already mastered this. I used a PowerPoint that would be demonstrated at the front of the class in the guided practice to teach the students the names associated with colors and numbers in Spanish.

      I also made a separate PowerPoint that students would go through using computers at their desks. This PowerPoint included slides with colors and numbers, and audio that could be heard when the kids clicked on the pictures associated. This was my independent practice. 

    For the close of the lesson, the end of the teacher PowerPoint included slides that asked "what is rojo(or any other spanish color)". The children would volunteer to come to the smartboard and click on the color they thought was correct. I included hyperlinks to correct and incorrect slides. 

My opinion of this project:

   

     Although this project took a VERY long time and was difficulty to make, I thought it was an important lesson to have as future teachers. When I heard that we were going to have to do a PowerPoint, I groaned a little because of my previous experience with this program. I found them incredibly boring in high school and was not excited to make a boring lesson plan (especially since I will have to keep the attention of second or third graders some day.) But I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there are many cool things that can be done with a PowerPoint that are not so boring. My professor, Mr.Smith, provided us with an article that explains the right and wrong things to do when using PowerPoint as a teaching tool. His other resource also helped me in writing my objective for the lesson and to decide what I wanted the lesson to teach. 

    I believe that any PowerPoint used in the classroom (no matter what age group) should never be just narrative. It should be interactive, engaging, informative. The instructor or outside resources should be giving most of the information to the students, not the words on the slides.