Reading Site.mp4

How to use a Site.mp4

Check out this short video to see how I teach a class to use Google Sites

Direct Instruction

The lesson had two learning intentions, as it covered aspects of both the Digital Technology and English curriculum. The aim was for the students to create a website that would support students in years 3 and 4 to pick reading books.

At each stage we built on our awareness of audience (our literacy learning intention), while learning the skills required to build our tool (our Digi tech learning intention).

We started by discussing the brief and our stakeholder, before planning our website. I then taught the students some skills in site creation, but allowed a lot of time for exploration and discussion about the set up.

Once we had a basic site and the navigation sorted, we went to the library and wrote short blurbs for the books we wanted to recommend. The students also designed a quiz to further help the children to pick a book.

Extended plan here

Reflection

The students were highly engaged in this lesson and felt really empowered after creating the website. I felt I had a bit of a shaky start (I was not at all concise when introducing the task), but I soon got into the lesson and picked up the pace well.

As the session was so long however, it was quite difficult to edit and still illustrate the progression of the session/ the students skills. I had to cut a lot of discussion that I thought was important - we discussed a number of things from copy right, students differing interests and even pondered whether this could simply be a prototype before we made a website for students around the world.

Things to note

This lesson took place during a week where the class had been focussing on summarising and audience awareness. A small group of students met the learning intention early in the week, so I differentiate their learning and give them a different create activity.

This took 2 lessons (about 2.5 hours), but it could have easily been a week long focus. If I were to do it again, I would give it a week so we could cover the topic in greater depth.

The student already had a great deal of prior knowledge in the use of Google Apps for Education. They had also attended previous technology classes so they had a lot of prior knowledge in this area. Once the students had created the website, they co-created it very quickly and found it easy to navigate Google Sites. I imagine repeating this lesson with students who were knew to Google Apps or Chromebooks would take a great deal longer.