Prompted+Questions

__**Teacher to Student Prompted Questions:**__
We are going to expand on how many states on the east coast the students are going to be learning about by having the students in groups and each group will be given a state to research and present on for the class. As each group does their presentation the students will answer the following questions:
 * 1) What are the capitals of the following states Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusettes, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvannia, Deleware, Maryland?
 * 2) What is each states slogan?
 * 3) What do each states flags look like?
 * 4) What is the state bird and tree?
 * 5) What is state population?
 * 6) When did they become a state?
 * 7) Which states were part of the orginal 13 colonies?
 * 8) Name one historial figure from each state?
 * 9) Name one food they are know for?
 * 10) Name any fun fact you can think of about the states.

1. //Why did you choose this lesson? Brief summary or original lesson plan design/goals of lesson.//
We chose this lesson plan because of the content of the lesson and the regional history. The goal of the original lesson plan was for the students to gain United States east coast geographical knowledge. In addition, the lesson plan challenged the students comprehension of facts on the states they were learning to locate. 2. //Define new lesson plan design/goals of lesson// The new lesson plan was designed to challenge the students' critical thinking about the facts of the states they are learning to locate. The lesson is also designed to go beyond the original lesson plan so the students' will be able to locate even more states than just the basic New England states. This lesson plan model is also inclusive of technology which will aide in their learning. 3. //Which tool or tools did you choose to incorporate into this lesson to potentially improve it?// We chose to use digital tools; geocommons.com and Google maps which will engage the students in gaining information and basic facts about the states. We also incorporated a program called flashmap.com. This is a tool that can be used to help students learn the locations of states and capitals, and for the teacher as an assessment tool to track how the students are meeting the standards. 4. //Why did you choose this tool(s)?// The tools that we chose were integrated into the lesson to make the learning more fun and interactive for the students. These tools are used as a challenge for the students to be able to properly execute the games and research the fact to answer the questions they have been given. The tools that were chosen could also be used as a means of the assessment by the teachers. 5. //What standards were you using to guide your decision on this?NETS//? We used standards (NETS) 2 which incorporated collaboration and communication. We also used NETS standard 4 which involoves critical thinking and problem solving. We feel the revised lesson plan does incorporate these which the original lesson plan would not have 6. //Do you feel this will improve your teaching? If so, why?// We feel this could improve teaching under the guidelines that the proper resources are available in the classroom. This could be very helpful in improving teaching because it keeps the teachers current with tools the students are used to. We are surrounded by technology and students are used to having it involved in almost every part of their lives. Technology and teaching should go hand in hand. Incorporating technology into lesson plans can be a good way to keep them interested and add variety to the lesson. 7. //Do you feel this will help improve student learning? If so, how and why?// We feel this would improve student learning because it's a means of differentiated instruction. Knowing that all students learn differently teachers have to utilize many different techniques and teaching styles to engage the class and create a positive impact in student learning.