Lesson Planning Online: What's in your cereal?

A lesson plan has been made using the assure model, and the topic is sugar, fats and salts contained in different cereals. This would be a great lesson to teach students about what is in our food, the nutrition behind it and what it does to our bodies. Aside from just targeting students to get a grasp of these ideas, teachers may also be able to reach out to their parents and others within each students household. It used to be that handouts and pamphlets would be one way to give exposure to chronic diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure on Guam. With this lesson plan, it will benefit anyone at a computer and will teach our younger generation about the causes of these simple things found in our everyday breakfast cereals.

Creating a lesson plan online with all of its objectives creatively placed on different tabs of a website was definitely something I was not used to seeing or doing. The best part about actually working on it was seeing all the options given to modify it and make it more interactive while keeping it organized. For the most part, all the elements to creating a solid plan for the lesson remained the same as any other lesson I would prepare for, I just had a better and more creative way of putting it all together.

What I think students can take back the most from this activity and lesson would be getting the exposure and hopefully making the connection of how unhealthy we are when it comes to food on Guam. I believe this would relate heavily with the third standard from NETS*S. It states to model digital age work and learning. (iste.org) Under sub-standard 3A, it demonstrates fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations.  When looking into the assure model (Smaldino, 2013) and how to set up a lesson plan with that specific format, I didn’t realize that there was a specific way to write it up for multimedia lessons. The one thing that threw me off the most, but also gave a ton of space for creativity was the idea behind choosing the tools that we get to use. At this point, now that I’ve learned so much and tested a few different tools, especially other presentation tools, I did think he most difficult part would be deciding which tool would work best with students, their strengths and what will help in reaching the target objectives.

Now a days, technology is on the rise and the students going through school now have grown up with technology in their hands. Using the technology to teach in the classroom is definitely one way to get their attention, but because they are the next generation, we want to teach them well and be able to share that information they have taken in. Imagine what they would do with the information that they learn and gain from their teachers who choose to use a tool they are more familiar with.

I’m not too sure I would do another online lesson plan any time soon, but I do think that there are greater benefits and especially coming from a new teachers position, it makes us look more professional. If I have more time to prep and plan I’m sure I would pick and choose my lesson to be online, but for now I have to say that the experience has been great and I’ve learned a lot of knew things when hitting target objects, working in collaborative groups, tying in a topic that hits home, and doing it all online.

NETS-T. (2008). Home. Retrieved June 27, 2016, from http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/nets-t-standards.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Smaldino, S. (2013). Assure: about the Model. Retrieved June 29, 2016, from http://www.instructionaldesign.org/mode