Submitted by: Donna Wine
School: J.R. Tucker High School
Summary
In this lesson, which highlights TIPC rubric section Communication and Collaboration, Google Drive is used as part of a prewriting strategy for a compare/contrast essay development. Students participated in a “fishbowl” activity as a whole class, generating ideas that smaller groups then organized into thesis statements and topic sentences.
TIPC Ratings
ENTRY – While this is not the TIPC focus of the lesson, students use primary, authentic, teacher-chosen texts to compare and contrast.
APPROACHING – Students engaged in meaningful, purposeful communication on an authentic task. Collaboration/communication breaks the traditional boundaries of time and space by allowing multiple modes of learning during the same activity and engaging all students in a way not possible without technology. Some students were talking while other students were evaluating speaker performance while others still were taking notes on discussion content. All information was recorded on collaborative documents shared in smaller groups, providing information in such a way that speakers received feedback on their performance for assessment and reflection. Also, the collaborative document organized information from the fishbowl in a way that maximized efficiency because the smaller groups were already prepared for their next task with no additional discussion or compilation needed.
DEVELOPING – While this was not a TIPC focus for this lesson, students used information compiled on a collaborative document to organize group answers to the open-ended question, “how are these literary selections alike and different?” The collaborative documents were also used for group composing of a thesis statement and topic sentences, requiring creativity and synthesis of ideas.
DEVELOPING – While this is not a TIPC focus area for this lesson, students did communicate and collaborate using Google docs, applying critical thinking skills to the authentic task of comparing and contrasting two works of literature. Students created meaningful, original work by planning the basic ideas and structure for this essay.
Student Artifact
