Science. Year 9. Illegal drugs. Double lesson: 1hr 20 mins. 1 week to prepare.
Read through text book material.
Collate digital resources onto IWB flipchart (http://search.creativecommons.org).
Think of hooks: the drugs don’t work, they just make it worse (The Verve, Urban Hymns 1997).
Learning objectives (mine):
1. Understand what illegal drugs are
2. To know what illegal drugs exist
3. To understand addiction in relation to illegal drugs
4. To be able to visually identify an illegal drug; it’s characteristics and it’s effects
Technology:
ActiVote to gather opinion in the room
ActivSlate to enable pupils to ask questions and do match-up work on the board
Quiz and game from http://drugsinfo.org (ActivSlate again)
Wordle of keywords
Moodle course collating classroom and non-classroom resources
Flipchart
Images and lots of them (http://search.creativecommons.org)
Activities:
Starter for none: think of all the drug words you know (write in exercise book, mimicking the wordle displayed on the screen). Briefly discuss any new words.
Intro: flipchart, some images of drug taking, learning objectives
Quiz: done on board by pupil using activslate (unless no volunteers in which case I’ll do it in discussion with the class)
Spider Diagrams: one for each drug in exercise book. Word association. Example on board.
Plenary: ad hoc questions. anonymous mode. pupils ask questions – come up to board and ‘run’ the question.
I teach the lesson today so we’ll see how it goes. Concerned I haven’t put enough pupil activity into it. Too dependent on me as the teacher.
Lesson Plan:
Time
|
Activity
|
| 5 mins |
In and starter |
| 10 mins |
intro including quizzes with activSlate |
| 15 mins |
ActiVote, hand out and register
identify 3 drugs on flipchart pages
ad hoc questions |
| 15 minutes |
Match words onto table
activSlate or up at board |
| 15 minutes |
Notes in exercise book:
spider diagrams – one for each drug and include a little cartoon sketch if you’ve got time |
| 10 minutes |
Set homework
show examples of sliderocket and other alternative presentation apps
show how to upload to Bernard |
| 10 minutes |
plenary
extension work |
Afterwards:
The lesson went well. Teacher was suitably impressed with use of Moodle to co-ordinate resources and homework including assignment, also varied use of IWB with ActiVote.
The ActivSlate activity didn’t go so well; pupils were to drag a word into the right place on a table. Take a turn and pass the slate along. However, they had not used one before so was clumsy for this activity with lots of images on screen to move around. Also, should have locked flipchart table to background because if someone nudged it accidentally everything went out of kilter. Abandoned this and made pupils line up at one side of the board and do one word each with the pen whilst (when back at desk) making spider diagram notes.
Pupils were engaged but my use of the ActiVote wasn’t the best. Questions were too simple or not really necessary. Required more thought. However, where it showed it’s value was in getting the pupils to ask a question (naturally they wanted to know who had taken drugs of the various classes). I had deliberately not set-up the user database to have their names on display. This allowed for information to be collected anonymously. How truthful everyone was I am not sure. Results were/are confidential.
Overall, the lesson was a success but I think I (my delivery) was integral; this wasn’t the aim. The pupils were very engaged throughout. Their learning will be assessed from the presentations they submit.
Once I get the teachers feedback I will post it as a blog comment.
