Hi everyone! I’m sad to say that I got sick last night :( so I only went to my internship two days this week (I was still sick today). So sorry if this post is less involved than normal and thanks for reading!
This week continued going through the lesson plans, which I started last week. Since that was my main task and there weren’t any other meetings or events, I thought I would go more in depth about exactly what I am doing.
So the first thing I did was just download the lesson plans that were on the Habitat for Humanity website down below.
I decided to focus on the lesson plans for elementary school students and high school students first, since the lessons were tons of separate, individual PDFs while the middle school lesson plans were all in one document. Because they were separate, I could easily sort out which lessons were longer or shorter, which was the first thing I did.
I made a spreadsheet with two pages, one for High School and one for Elementary School, and on each page I wrote the number of periods in the first row with the links in the columns below. This was just to have everything more organized and make it so that if Habitat ever knew that a teacher was willing to teach for, say, three periods, it would be easy to quickly figure out which lessons would be appropriate.
I then went through each lesson making sure that it was still usable. The most obvious thing to check was the links, because if the plans contained links they were most likely broken since the Habitat website was remodelled after the lesson plans were written. I went through deleting broken links and replacing them with good ones or substituting them with text, as well as updating any old statistical information I saw. To fix these problems, I had to convert the PDFs to Microsoft Word, which created even more formatting problems I had to solve. Once I had fixed a plan, I would highlight it in blue. If there were no issues, I would leave it be with no highlighting. If I couldn’t fix it (when sections of the website the plan was based on were completely gone) I highlighted it in red.
I think that my main task for next week will be finishing up the high school lesson plan revisions, and then seeing if I can make all of them into one period lesson versions instead of lasting two or three periods.
And that’s it! I hope you guys had a good spring break!
Hi, Sarah. I hope you feel better soon. My head is actually hurting from trying to comprehend what you had to do. I don't think I would have enough patience to deal with fixing broken links and replacing them with new links or texts. Does the lesson planning for middle school versus high school students differ? Good luck with shortening the lessons. Can't wait to hear more.
ReplyDeleteThanks! The lesson plans do differ between middle school and high school; the high school lesson plans are longer, use larger, more advanced words, and are more reliant on computer access (they include more links). The format of the lesson plans is also different, since the high school lesson plans are in separate PDFs while the middle school lesson plans are all in one big PDF.
DeleteHey, Sarah, I'm sorry that you got sick, but I applaud you for your excellent organizing skills as well as your patience with looking through all the links. How do you know which parts of a lesson plan and which parts can be taken out? Is there a lot a information that needs to be cut out of the lesson plans that take 2+ periods? Feel better soon! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you! The activities are already separated out into days (class periods) within each lesson plan, so I'm mainly seeing if each day can work as a stand-alone lesson or if it depends on work done on the previous day. If it does depend on the previous days work I see if I can alter it so that it doesn't, or I just use the first day.
DeleteSounds like you have a lot of work to do!
ReplyDeleteIs Habitat for Humanity planning to remake those old website pages that are no longer functional, or are you just putting the lesson plan info in another form?
Good luck with the work and hopefully you feel better!
Thanks Serena! There's no plan to remake the old pages, but alot of the information from them is still on the website in a different location, so I am just updating the links. If I can't find the information from the old website on the new website, I first see if I can find it someplace else and then check if I can just remove the link and rework the lesson plan without it.
DeleteHi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI hope you feel better. I am interested to see what the lessons plans for the middle school and high school students entail. Thank You!
-Vara Vungutur
Thanks!
DeleteFirstly I hope you feel better soon, but besides that this week sounded like a busy week. How are you going to choose which parts of the lesson plan is important and what part can be taken out? Do you have any guidelines or a mentor to help you with this difficult and time consuming task? I look forward to see what you do next week.
ReplyDeleteThank you! Normally the lesson plan has one central activity, such as making a diagram or presentation, so I try to leave in the things that are completely necessary to specifically this activity and take out the stuff that isn't as relevant to this. My on-site mentor, Cassandra, gives me basic guidelines for all of trhe projects I do.
DeleteHi Sarah, sorry that you were sick this week but it sounded like a very productive week. When looking at the lesson plans, how did you decide which ones to use for the program? also, would you use all of the lesson plans or only some of them? Finally, where would these lessons be taught, in a school setting or like in a extracurricular? i can't wait to see what next week holds!
ReplyDeleteThanks! Right now I'm just trying to fix all of the lesson plans so that Habitat for Humanity would be able to use any of them. They would decide which lesson plan to use for each specific event by looking at the age group and the amount of time the teacher is willing to give. The lessons would most likely be taught in a school setting, although they would work in an extracurricular setting as well.
DeleteGreat job on week 5!
ReplyDeleteI just had a quick question,
Besides educational differences among both lesson plans, how have you noticed a difference among the level of education in both highschool and middleschool plans? Essentially, how were they different? Thanks,
Zand
Thank you! The high school lesson plans definitely have a higher vocabulary level than the middle school plans, and are also longer. They also are more reliant on the internet than the middle school plans, containing more links.
DeleteHi Sarah! Sorry you were sick this week. Do you feel better? Anyhow how long did it take you to make this spread sheet. and also how will you go about teaching elementary school AND high school students?--Ismail Hamed 10
ReplyDeleteThanks! I'm all better now. I took about 30 minutes to actually make the spreadsheet, sorting the lesson plans by length, but the harder part is updating all of them. There are different lesson plans for elementary and high school students so Habitat will divide them by age and then just use the appropriate plan.
DeleteSorry to hear that you were unwell. Hope you are doing well now and back to work. Please elaborate on your lessons plans when you get started on that part.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'll be sure to do that.
DeleteHi Sarah! I knew swimming was a bad idea! Just kidding it was a lot of fun (if only I could swim a little better). I was wondering what's the next step in your project? Are you doing outside research as well?
ReplyDeleteHope you get better!
Thanks Robert. If by "swim a little better" you mean "swim at all" then I wish for that to! I think the next step in my project will be working more on activities for younger kids to do that will increase their awareness about housing issues, maybe using Just Neighbors. I've done some outside research on the best way to engage younger kids and the benefits of doing so, which you can find some of in my proposal.
DeleteHi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteIm sorry to hear that you got sick, I was able to survive even though everyone in my family got it one at a time. I'm sure that Habitat for Humanity is really happy to have you doing your project there, it sounds like you are able to offer a lot of help to their cause. Until next week, good luck!
Thank you!
Delete