PBI REPORT

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ECI 546
New Literacies and Media
NC State University
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Hong Cheng & Jeffrey Brown & Min Li & Yan Wang
December 2014

Introduction
There is a famous American proverb, Tell me and I'll forget. Show me, and I may not remember.
Involve me, and I'll understand. But in the 21st century, understanding is not enough for the students to
compete in the real world. The ability of applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating are all indispensable
for 21st century learners. Consequently, what we teachers should do is to produce effective teaching with
new technology. Engaging students to help them understand what they have learned and be creative is the
essence of what TPACK, Blooms Taxonomy, and Schema theory emphasize. Accordingly, our PBI aims to
engage 1st grade students in a guided reading lesson with an informational text with the use of CPS student
response clickers. We want to find out if using this piece of interactive technology can help promote student
understanding, increase motivation and active participation, and finally, promote transfer of knowledge that
is assessed throughout the lesson. Answering these essential questions will validate the use of this
technology in a 21st century classroom.
We were inspired by TPACK when considering which tool we should use and how we should use it.
Technological pedagogical content knowledge is an understanding that emerges from interactions among
content, pedagogy, and technology knowledge (Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, 2009, P.62). Based on the
understanding of the condition of school, classroom, and our students, we decided to use CPS student
response clickers.
CPS Clickers
CPS clickers, made by e- nstruction, are student response devices which work synchronously with
software designed to allow teachers to assess student learning before, during, Then, the teacher explained
some definitions such as, antenna, colony, jaw, larva, and pupa. Based on Blooms Revised Taxonomy, the
first level is remembering. The teacher gave each student a worksheet and had them match these words to
the pictures. The teacher walked around and checked their answers. Teachers can ask multiple choice, yes or
no, true or false, and open ended questions. The teacher can see the responses in real time and allow them to
drive the instruction. This can be increasingly important when checking for student comprehension.

Lesson Design
As 1st grade students are curious about whatever they see or feel in the real world, our reading
content should reflect this. We chose to design a lesson about ants, which most of them may have seen in
real life. As many, if not all, students will have some preexisting knowledge about ants we decided to use a
KWL chart to capture what they already knew, what they wanted to learn, and finally, what they learned
about ants after the lesson. What`s more our students are too young to concentrate on the content from the
beginning to the end. With the sufficient understanding of pedagogical knowledge, technological
knowledge and content knowledge, our goal of helping students understand the informational text is clearer
and clearer.
We were influenced by Blooms Taxonomy when we were setting the learning objectives. There are
three taxonomies according to Blooms Taxonomy, which make students outcomes measurable. They are
knowledge-based goals, skills-based goals, and affective goals. Since our students are young kids, our PBI
focused more on the knowledge-based goals and affective goals, especially remembering, understanding,
applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating in knowledge-based goals and responding, valuing, organization in
affective goals. We hoped students could first know and remember the features, habitat and food of ants,
understand the life cycle of ants and then use the knowledge they learned to identify ants from other insects
and find out the differences between what they have known of ants and what they learn in class. Besides,
we wanted our students to participate in the class discussions and activities and adopts a long-term value
system that is pervasive consistent, and predictable(Blooms Taxonomy of Educational Objectives).
Furthermore, when we designed our lesson plans, we were inspired by Schema Theory as well.
Schema is used to understand the interaction of key factors affecting the comprehension process. Schemata
represent knowledge about concepts: objects and the relationships they have with other objects (Schema
Theory). Based on the reference of schema theory, we made a KWL chart to help us find out students needs
before, during and after reading accompanying the questions we designed with the use of CPS student
response clickers. KWL can guide students in reading and understanding the text, which was composed of
three stages: What students know? What students want to know? What students learned?

Implementation
As was pointed out earlier, our PBI project related to TPACK and the Revised Blooms Taxonomy.
Also we applied Schema Theory to students learning process. This class focused on students reading
comprehension. 20 students participated in the forty-five-minute class. When CPS was used to power the
clicker technology, the teacher generated reports for a more in-depth look at student performance. Selecting
from numerous reporting options (such as table 2 and 3) including item analysis, study guide, instructor
summary reports, and more, the teacher analyzed what students understood and where they needed extra
attention. We designed our lesson based on Blooms Revised Taxonomy, such as remembering,
understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.
According to Schema Theory, in order to help students construct meaning from their background
knowledge, at the beginning of the class, the teacher showed three pictures of various ants and one nonexample, butterfly, on the smartboard, and asked students to use clickers to identify non-example. The
teacher could see the result from student response system. 90% students chose D- butterfly, which meant
that most of students could identify ants and led to discussion of ant features. The teacher had students come
to the carpet by the smart board and created a KWL chart. Both teacher and students could add to it
throughout the lesson. The teacher helped students write known knowledge about ants on the KWL chart.
Then the teacher developed W portion through asking some questions and required students to read this
article. The questions were: What do ants eat and how do they eat food? Where do ants live? What do ants
life cycle look like? Then students were required to start to learn this article if they wanted to know more.
Then the teacher used the audio digital article on ants from website (http://www.pebblego.com/) and
showed it to students using the smart board so that students could listen to the article. Also each student was
given the hardcopy so that they could see the article while listening. Several parts of this article were
introduced, such as ants bodies, habitats, food, life cycle, and fun facts. After listening, students were
divided into five groups. Each student in the group read one paragraph for the other group members. After
they read all the paragraphs, each group came to the front and read this article for their classmates
respectively and the teacher checked and helped them with their pronunciation.

Relating to the second level of Blooms Revised Taxonomy, understanding, the teacher read different
paragraphs and had students speak out what each paragraph introduced about ants. Next, each group was
given 5 minutes to discuss what they had known about ants so far. After discussion, each group came to the
front of classroom and added the information to the KWL chart with the teachers help. This is the third
level of Blooms Revised Taxonomy, applying, which means using learned information carries out a new
task.
With regard to the fourth level of Blooms Revised Taxonomy, analyzing, each group analyzed ants
from the perspectives about body, food, life cycle, and habitat through drawing a map. Then each group
came in front to share their map with other students.
Based on the fifth level of Blooms Revised Taxonomy, evaluating, the teacher gave them eight
questions through CPS and showed them on the smartboard. Students used clickers to choose the correct
answers. Before they gave the answers through clickers, they needed to underline the answers on the text.
These questions were Multiple choice, True or False, and Yes or No. Through clickers, the teacher could
encourage each student to participate in this assessment and see all students answers in real-time(see table
1). The teacher found that one specific question was hard for over half of students, which meant that they did
not acquire this knowledge well. Therefore, the teacher explained this knowledge again and asked students
to answer the same question. At the second time, 85% students could give a correct answer. Clickers were
very useful to help the teacher know students learning progress and modify the teaching timely. Besides,
through the students response system, the teacher also could see clearly which student had difficulties in
understanding this article. The teacher could help him/her alone after class and it made teaching more
effective.
The last level of Blooms Revised Taxonomy is creating, which means that putting elements together
to form a coherent or functional whole. Therefore, at the end of the class, students were encouraged to do a
project. They were given an outline of an ant body. Students created their own ant and wrote some key
words using the defining qualities they learned about during the lesson. Their creative works were displayed
on a bulletin board with an ant hill as the background, which would build a long-term learning environment.

Assessment
After this class, students had a clear idea about the characteristics about ants, like their appearance,
habitat, life cycle, food, and so forth. It is obvious that students learn better with the use of CPS clickers.
According to the question reports, 18/20 students learned how to recognize different types of ants
from other insects, 16/20 students learned the color of ants, 17/20 students learned the length of ants, 16/20
students learned ants habitats, 19/20 students learned the function of ants jaws, 17/20 students learned
ants jobs, 20/20 students learned ants foods, 17/20 students learned the function of ants antennae, and
18/20 students learned queen ants job. This revealed most students had achieved the teaching goals we set
through the integration of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge.
As can be seen, the CPS clickers helped us improve our efficiency of assessing students
understanding. Every time we asked them a question, we could get immediate feedback and detailed
response reports at once. This helped us know how much students learned about this lesson so that we could
adjust it according to the response report. Whats more, this helped us know what kind of questions that
students found difficult, and it was benefit for us to make practical teaching goals and prepare well for
teaching the informational text.
Accordingly, with the help of CPS clickers, we successfully improved students understanding of
informational text and checked their understanding more efficiently.
For us this class brought us a great experience about how to integrate digital learning tools with our
teaching. However, it was a great challenge for us as well. First, we needed to consider how to integrate CPS
into the lesson and use it effectively. Second, we needed to think about how to combine CPS with teaching
pedagogical to improve students understanding. Third, it was hard for us to keep adjusting our teaching
method according to the CPS report.
However, these challenges provided us a great opportunity to learn from each other. Although we are
from different countries with different cultural backgrounds, we respected each other and contributed our
ideas to this PBI project. Even though we were all very busy, we still managed to find the appropriate time
for us to discuss about our PBI project via Google Hangout, email, and Google Drive. There were inevitably

some disagreements in our discussion, however, we made consensus finally about our teaching plan, video
tape and report. Eventually, we accomplished our commission.
During this process, we not only became good friends but also gained cultural competence which can
help us cooperate with people with different backgrounds in the future.

Appendix
Table 1
The questions and the percentage of correct answers
Question Yes APA format

Percentage of Correct Answer

What color are most ants?

80%

How long do ants grow?

85%

Where do ants build their nests?

80%

How do ants eat food?

95%

Who finds the food?

85%

Ants eat fruit, leaves, and dead insects. T/F

Which is NOT a way ants use their antenna?

100%
55% (first time); 85% (second time)

Table 2

Table 3

References
Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. ,2009.What Is Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge?
Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1), 60-70.
(2014, November 18). Revised blooms taxonomy. Retrieved from Revised Blooms Taxonomy
website: http://www.utar.edu.my/fegt/file/Revised_Blooms_Info.pdf
(http://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/gipej/teaparty.pdf)
(2014, November 18). Schema theory. Retrieved from Schema Theory website:
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/g/gipej/teaparty.pdf

LINK TO VIDEO