Pen Pals Lesson Reflection

Assessing Prior Knowledge and Planning Instruction:
Prior knowledge for this lesson is knowledge of what a friendly letter is. I would have taught a lesson about what a letter is and had the students write letters to each other and their families. When the pen pal lesson is taught it will be more about refining the conventions involved in a friendly letter. Prior knowledge will be assessed by starting the lesson with a discussion about friendly letters to refresh their memories about what a friendly letter is and how they have used it in the past. My objectives for this lesson are the standard of having the students use greeting, closing and commas correctly in a friendly letter as well as a personal objective of having them add personal details about their lives and  their culture in their letter.

Designing Instruction:
The instructional methods I described use the idea of engaging students through interest and ownership. By giving the students the opportunity to choose what is in their writing, it allows them to take onwership of their work and it engages them because when they get to decide what the content it, it is usually content that is interesting to them and they enjoy writing about it so much more. Students who are interested in what they are doing are more engaged and it makes what they are doing meaningful.

Planning Assessment:
My assessment aligns with the standards because it checks off the parts of the friendly letter that my students need to know. My assessment demonstrates student engagement because they are able to choose what goes into their letters. They can make it as long as they want as well as include whatever details they feel are important to them. By making this assignment personal, it means that my students are able to express their ideas and express on paper about themselves, and it demonstrates higher order thinking skills because they have to think about their lives and themselves and decide on a way to write a summary that encompasses the basics about their lives.

ISTE NETs Standards:
1. My lesson meets the creativity standards because they students are able to be creative in how they write their letter as well as they have the opportunity to include a picture or illustration to go along with their letter.
2. In their lives, my students will have to use word processing programs to type everything from emails to essays. It is important that they are exposed to this because it is so important that they master this basic technology because they will use it all of their lives and being knowledgeable in it will help them in their careers and personal lives.
3. I will model the process of writing a letter to the other teacher while my students write a letter to the other teacher's students. I will make sure that my students know how I used technology and why I used it when I did.
4. The lesson I created advocates safe use of technology because we are writing and sending our letters to a source that has been verified by communication between the teachers. This is a very learner centered lesson because it is customizable to each and every child because they are each creating a unique work of their own that can be modified if need be. I will have modeled in my writing how even though we are writing to another classroom, that we will not be using our last names, just our first names as a way to make sure that everyone is protected. Global awareness is integrated in this lesson through the nature of international pen pals. By adding in research about the place the pen pals live and finding them on a map it helps so that the students can see that there is so much more word out there and that we can explore it right from our classroom. I think it is so important for students to use the technology tools at hand to explore other parts of the world and cultures and this is a easy way to start that.