Metro #2 Overview

Metro Service Project #2 was a successful event that allowed us to provide a group of students with an engaging lesson that incorporated both hands-on and technology to facilitate learning. It had the feel of an actual classroom experience that I would encounter in my clinical teaching. I think this is especially beneficial for my classmates that may not be at that point of their degree yet. 

The technology we used in this lesson was Canva, Nearpod, QR code and an external drawing website. I used Canva to create a digital e-book for our AI Hero Story and then imported into Nearpod as the container for the actual lesson so I could add in slides that had direct links to the drawing website in case some students didn't have their phones to use the QR codes. 

Canva slides

Nearpod Lesson

We integrated this technology with a hands-on activity to investigate, describe and identify which environmental conditions are more favorable than others to garden plants. Not only did we get to have a mini lesson on environmental conditions, but we discussed how we created the stickers they used in the iCreate lab at the University where they can go with their parents to create their own. 

One of the things we learned from this experience is that incorporating technology into lessons is beneficial, but there could be circumstances where you need a backup plan if the technology fails for unknown reasons. Luckily, I grabbed a stack of paper and markers at the last minute just in case we had issues. This came in handy because the drawing website only worked for half of the devices and the WiFi would occasionally turn off on the Chromebooks. Even though some of them had to draw their image on paper, we were still able to upload to our Nearpod board for assessment.

Towards the last five minutes the students participated in the exit ticket created by the Read members of our group. They did an excellent job developing age-appropriate questions that related to the actual Hero Story and what they learned.

Finally, the students moved to the Kinesiology portion of the event where they participated in some exercises, a game and some stretches. This portion did not require much from us besides making sure our group stayed where they were supposed to be. I think having hands-on, technology, reading, and kinesiology aspects to the event created an engaging experience for students and educators.

• Our Team Meet #3 went smoothly due to all of our members looking over the pre-meet links and tasks. We discussed our thoughts and reflections on how we felt our lesson at Metro went. We each had very similar thoughts on the strengths of the event and we each gave some personal growth thoughts and goals for future instruction. Personally, my main goal was to maintain and be aware of time management in future lessons. Overall, the collaboration and participation in our group was a success. The members in our group that were from another class felt this event didn't require as much work from them as it did us, so they allowed us to take the lead and simply took direction from us. Meet #3 Video
• Team Scrumboard
• Doodle Poll screenshot: