Pond Life, EWW!

My plan for teaching is related to the lesson plan that I am creating for my science class. In my lesson I am planning to incorporate virtual pond dip. The students will be learning about microorganisms, their environments, and their characteristics. The beginning of the lesson will be an introduction to microorganisms where the students will see how yeast reacts to warm water and fills up a balloon. After they have a basic experience with a microorganism, we will explore them more in depth by identifying them using virtual pond dip. This will allow all students to see the microorganisms blown up and to learn specific information about the organisms found in a pond. They will complete a graphic organizer on the computer that displays the information they learn on at least four of the microorganisms and a hand written venn diagram that compares what they learned about single-celled and multi-celled microorganisms.

1. What is the content you will be focusing on in your science activity? Using Virtual Pond, student will discover the many shapes and sizes of microorganisms that live in pond water. They will list and identify characteristics of the microorganisms using a graphic organizer. This objective meets the state core standard for science in sixth grade that states, "Examine and illustrate size, shape, and structure of organisms found in an environment such as pond water. " This is standard 5, Objective 1, indicator a. Indicator b will also be addressed because it focuses on common characteristics that will be shown in the venn diagram.
2. What is the pedagogy you will be using and why is it a good fit with the content? To teach this lesson I will be using the format of an inquiry lesson plan. Students will be directly instructed on how to arrive at the virtual pond dip website and will directly learn the directions for the yeast experiment, but they will be let loose to explore the pond dip website so that they can build their own knowledge. This will allow them to discover and create opinions about similarities and differences and also gives them a chance to share what they learn and come up with hypothesis about microorganisms as a class.
   
3. What is the technology you'll be using and why is it a good fit with the content and pedagogy? Virtual pond dip is the technology that I plan to use and I plan to use it because it gives every student access to the information. Rather than using a standard microscope that students struggle to focus, they can see the microorganisms in large size and have readily available descriptions for all of them without searching through tons of books. The other reason I chose virtual pond dip has to do with the season that we are in. Most ponds are cold or frozen at this point in the year and most microorganisms will be dormant or dead right now. This allows me to teach about microorganisms when and where I want.

This is my plan and I hope it goes well. We'll see how user friendly voicethread will be.