Holy Cow, Sean Shephard – your Prezi’s knocked our shoes and our socks off!
Sean Shephard is a 4th grade teacher from Michigan. Recently, he completed a Learners Edge course called One Stop Shop, Online Docs, Sketches, Spreadsheets and Virtual Travel for your Classroom. As part of his application requirement, Mr. Shephard developed a lesson plan for his social studies unit on immigration and we thought it may provide inspiration for you!.
Here’s a sampling from the lesson he created:
Lesson Title: Push and Pull Factors of Immigration to the United States
Brief Unit Summary: In this lesson students expand their understanding of push and pull factors by exploring immigration to the United States. Next, they explore immigration data looking for patterns. Then, they compare two books about immigration to the United States and identify the push and pull factors in each story. In history-related activities students explore primary sources relating to immigration including photographs, memoirs, and artifacts. Finally, students briefly explore the concept of forced migration as they consider the issue of slavery.
Here is a sampling of how Mr. Shephard incorporated some fantastic technology to captivate his students and help cement their learning:
Experience (Lesson Plan) 1: Immigration: What? Why? How? Inferencing/Drawing Conclusions Interactive KWL Activate Prior Knowledge, Prezi – Cause and Effect
Focus Questions: What is immigration? Why would anyone want to leave everything they know to move to a strange place? What hardships or problems did they have? What is the difference between an emigrant and an immigrant? What are push and pull factors? What is the difference between migration and immigration—Did everyone who traveled to the U.S. come with the intention of staying?
Learning Target: Effect/Activate Prior Knowledge/Vocab Introduction using
Prezi: Immigration–Push and Pull Factors
(Make sure you notice that the images change on the beat of the music! That’s detail!)
We’re impressed. And, the students in Mr. Shephard’s class are quite lucky! Are you using Prezi’s in your classroom? Are you using other technology tools in your teaching? Technology today is often made easy for all users and can be a great way to captivate the young learner (or any learner for that matter!).
