At the beginning of the lesson, the students opened up the Word document on each of their computers so that they could each create a table to use as their KWL chart. After they created the table with the right amount of rows and columns, they worked individually on what they knew and wanted to know about the solar system and its components. The students shared what they wrote and as each student shared, others could fill in the information from their peers according to their own knowledge within the chart. If I had more time, I would also be writing down the students' answers up on the board under the K and W sections.
I demonstrated how to open and use the Prezi online presentation tool. I walked through how to sign up for the tool and which template they should use for the assignment. I also showed my students that they can can change the images on the template and that they can add and delete slides accordingly. Teaching how to use the Prezi source was also a time consuming process because there are a ton of features that are lengthy to explain. It can also be a complicated tool for younger students, but I feel that it was age-appropriate for fourth graders. I probably would have modified the presentation so that they didn't need to know about the additional features and could just stick to the template as is.
My students worked independently on conducting their online research on the three planets I assigned them. The lesson plan didn't have a specified website to use for the research process; so I let them choose their own websites that they wanted to use to find the information. I would probably limit what my students are allowed to use as their websites if I were to teach this lesson again because all of my students chose Wikipedia for their sources. They did end up finding very interesting facts about the planets; although I don't know how much of what they found was actually authentic due to the website content.
My lesson was running long because it was a lesson that was to be taught within a two week period and I had to somehow crunch it into a thirty minute time frame. I did not go over my time frame because I gave instructions on how to move quickly through the process and assignment. I cut parts of my students' work short so that I could make sure that I got all of my instruction in for my students to process before moving on to each part. I shortened their work load since we were running out of time; but I made sure that they were each able to start each of the various processes of the lesson.
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