Web 2.0 Cross-curriculum Lesson Development

By Michael D. King

Most school curriculum models use a traditional format for learning in which individual subject

matter is taught in isolation. Integrating the content creates a curriculum that is both

challenging and meaningful to students. The process of developing cross curriculum

interdisciplinary lessons using a Blog or Wiki as a learning resource medium has several stages,

including identifying the learner outcomes, selecting a theme, developing a curriculum web,

establishing multimedia resources, creating activities, and designing assessment. This process

for developing cross-curriculum lessons for Web 2.0 collaborative network promotes effective

teaching practices by bringing together elements of curriculum resources that interact with one

another into a coherent, workable framework. The model below will be used as a guide in for

developing and integrating multiple resources into a collaborative Web 2.0 cross-curriculum

lesson.

Step One: Identifying Outcomes

In this process, the teacher selects the outcomes that should be taught in each content area.

Outcomes should be selected based on the prescriptive needs of the learner and the desired

outcomes of the district. By focusing instruction on essential learning outcomes and skills,

alignment activities can play an important role in improving student achievement. The selection

The Web 2.0 Cross-curriculum Lesson

Use State and

National

Standards to

Identify

Outcomes and

Select a Theme

Selecting a

Universal Theme

for the Cross-

Curriculum Web

2.0 Lesson

Use a Curriculum

Web to

Organize

Content and

Align Skills

Step One

Identifying Outcomes

Step Two

Establish A Theme

Step Three

Aligning Outcomes

Step Four

Establish Resources

Use Search

Features and

Create Media

Resources

Step Five

Lesson Design

Develop a Lesson

Plan & Create a

Cross-curriculum

Web 2.0 Lesson

of outcomes is based on the principle that teachers should facilitate what they expect students

to learn. This process require teachers to define clearly the learning outcomes that students are

expected to master during the facilitation of the lesson. For example, a fifth grade teacher

reviews his or her list of expected learner outcomes and finds that students will be assessed at

the end of the school year in the following geography areas, language arts, math, and history.

HISTORY: The student will:

Examine the reasons for the problems faced in and the results of key expeditions of Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and England (e.g., Columbus, Ponce de León, Magellan, Coronado, Cortés, Hudson, Raleigh, and La Salle) and the competition for control of North America.

GEOGRAPHY: The student will:

Identify graphs, charts, diagrams, and other sources and representations, such as aerial and shuttle photographs, satellite-produced images, the geographic information system (GIS), encyclopedias, almanacs, dictionaries, atlases, and computer-based technologies and construct and use maps of locales, regions, continents, and the world that demonstrate an understanding of mental mapping.

LANGUAGE ARTS: The student will:

Communicate through a variety of written forms and for a variety of writing for a specific audience or person.

Demonstrate appropriate practices in writing by applying standard English conventions to the revising and editing stages of writing.

Write research reports about important ideas, issues, or events that: a. frame questions about an idea or issue to direct the investigation. b. establish a main idea or topic. c. develop the topic with simple facts, details, examples, and explanations to support the

main idea. d. use a variety of information sources, including speakers, firsthand interviews, reference

materials, and online information. MATH: The student will:

Apply geometric properties and relationships and use measurements within the metric and customary systems to solve problems in a variety of contexts. 1. identify and describe the basic properties of figures (e.g., two or three-dimensionality,

symmetry, number of faces, types of angles). 2. find the perimeter of simple polygons and area of a rectangle (e.g., use 1-inch tiles to build

rectangles of different perimeters and areas). 3. use the appropriate units and tools to estimate and measure temperature, distance, length,

weight, and angles. 4. convert basic measurements of volume, weight and distance within the same system for metric

and customary units (e.g., inches to feet, hours to minutes, centimeters to meters).

The skills listed above would then become the priority in designing the cross-curriculum Web

2.0 collaborative lesson. These selected outcomes will become a part of the curriculum web in

Step Three after a theme for the lesson has been selected. The outcomes selected will also be a

reference guide when using search features. Identifying outcomes helps in the overall design of

the cross-curriculum lesson and will support the identification of content for the facilitation of

the lesson.

Step Two: Selecting and Developing a Theme

The next step in developing a cross-curriculum Web 2.0 collaborative lesson is to review the

outcomes matrices and to select a theme for lesson development. For an interdisciplinary

lesson to be successful, the theme must allow for many different areas of exploration and

should relate to some facet of the students’ lives so that it will capture their interest and give

the collaborative lesson a real-life application. When the curriculum connects with the

students’ lives and experiences, they are more likely to internalize what they learn.

The following criteria are helpful when selecting a theme:

The theme should have high student interest.

The theme should connect students’ lives to the world outside the classroom.

The theme should connect naturally with many subject areas.

The theme should have high teacher interest.

The theme selected for creating this cross-curriculum Web 2.0 based lesson that will be used as

an example will be entitled “The World of Christopher Columbus.” The reason for selecting this

theme is that it will provide content for the majority of the objectives identified when aligning

standards to state assessments.

Step Three: Developing a Curriculum Web

After selecting a theme, the teacher can develop a thematic diagram or web, which is an

excellent way to organize an interdisciplinary unit. At the center of the web is the central

theme. Spanning outward from it are the supporting themes, which are related to a different

content area, such as social studies, language arts, and history. (See figure below) Since the

teacher has already identified the important learning outcomes, those outcomes are added to

the appropriate supporting theme on the web. Additional content areas could be added such as

math and science. Once identified the content areas and assigned objectives will support

unitedstreaming searches for lesson plan development.

CURRICULUM WEB

Step Four: Establishing Multimedia Resources

The next step is for the teacher to identify the skills, activities, and experiences he or she will

use in the instruction of the learning outcomes and to design appropriate assessment strategies

for evaluating them. This can be accomplished through Google creative common searches for

multimedia content using video, pictures, slide shares and text documents as resources.

This process first requires the creation of folders for downloadable resources. These folders

would include a single folder named for each resource. For example, the teacher would create

one folder for videos, and additional folders for images, text resource files and clip art. The end

result of creating folders and downloading resources will prepare the teacher for the next step

in interdisciplinary lesson design.

HISTORY

SOCIAL

STUDIES

THE WORLD

OF

CHRISTOPHER

COLUMBUS

LANGUAGE

ARTS

Examine the reasons for, the problems faced

in, and the results of the Columbus

expeditions

Evaluate and draw conclusions from

different kinds of maps.

Relative location, direction, latitude, longitude, key,

legend, map symbols, scale, size, shape, and landforms.

Writing Process

Writing a Research Paper Mechanics, Usage

MATH

Measurement

Problem Solving

STEP FIVE: DESIGNING AN CROSS-CURRICULUM WEB 2.0 LESSON

The next step in the process of developing an interdisciplinary lesson is to use the curriculum

web, to design a Web 2.0 collaborative lesson that correlates all the specific learning outcomes.

The first course of action is to write a master lesson plan. The master lesson plan should include

all of the following elements: the presentation of the necessary background materials, a list of

the skills necessary for the successful completion of the lesson, the project or activities, a

review or reteaching, a conclusion that ties every lesson within the cross-curriculum lesson

together, and a final assessment. After the master lesson plan is developed, the individual

content can be embedded into the design of the Web 2.0 lesson. The Web 2.0 cross-curriculum

lesson plans should include the lesson’s title or type, the learning outcomes or objectives, the

steps necessary for executing the lesson, the length of time in days needed to complete the

lesson, and a list of the necessary resources. After the teacher has developed his o her Web 2.0

cross-curriculum lesson plan, a procedure for placing content onto the Wiki or Blog Website

should start with the introduction of content and how this content will interrelate with the

theme of the lesson.

Designing Activities Another area for which teachers are responsible in the planning process is designing activities

that support the desired learning outcome of the lesson. Activity structures are the backbone of

all lessons and determine, along with delivery statistics, the amount of learning that will occur.

How the activity is structured determines both teacher and student behaviors during the

lesson. Whenever teachers make decisions concerning activity structures, the following three

points must be determined: (1) how long the activity will take, (2) how the activity fits within

the context of the lesson, and (3) which element of the lesson as a whole will follow the activity

in order to support new learning. Additional variables to be considered by the teacher in the

design of activity structures include: methods for how the knowledge will be reinforced,

determination of how the skills will be attained, and instruction on how to design future

activities that support a continuous flow in the learning process.

Designing Methods of Assessment A performance assessment can evaluate students who are demonstrating their skills by

performing certain tasks, or it can evaluate products that students have produced to

demonstrate their knowledge. Performance assessments can be activities such as science

experiments and lab procedures, essays, speeches, computer programming, and so forth.

Constructing performance assessment rubrics and applying these assessment strategies to the

interdisciplinary whiteboard lesson will enable students to demonstrate their basic skills

through a real-world application.

Before constructing a performance assessment, the designer must decide on the time length

for the assignment, which could range from one class period to a week, or even a month for

assessments that require extensive research. Next, the designer must select the performance

modes which the task will require such as speaking, writing, problem solving, and so forth. The

designer must also decide how the students will participate in performing the task, for example,

individually, in pairs, or in small groups.

The actual process of designing performance assessments varies depending on the complexity

of the task and the availability of time. The performance assessment template outlines the

steps necessary for designing performance assessments. The performance assessment

template, along with the performance assessment worksheet, will help assessment designers to

create their own specific assessments for whiteboard lessons. It should be noted that

assessment techniques can be designed by using either traditional or alternative methods of

assessment. Alternative assessment refers to new assessment techniques that require students

to construct a response to an open-ended problem or task. In the case of both traditional and

alternative assessment, the task and the assessment should be closely aligned to the learning

outcomes.

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