Lesson Idea

Title: Hello My Name Is ____

Grade Level: 8th

Content: ELA

Standard Addressed: ELAGSE8W7: Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a
self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused
questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.

Amount of Time: 3-5 days

Technology Standard Addressed: 6. Creative Communicator

Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the
platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals.

SMAR Level:

Redefinition: Tech allows for the creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable.

Essential Question(s):

Who is someone that I want to learn more about and how can I teach the class about them?

How can I use technology to show off my knowledge about someone?

Learning Activity

Introduction: For this lesson I will have my students write down a list of 7 people that were important to
American history that they want to learn more about. I will then tell them to narrow down their list to 3
people. After everyone in class has narrowed down their list, I will tell them to pick 1 person from their
top 3 list that they are going to create an informational video about. I want everyone in the class to
research someone different, so I will pick their names randomly from a jar to determine the order of
who gets to pick their person first.

 Instruction/Activities: For this video assignment the class will use Adobe Spark to create an
informational video on their person. There will need to be at least 7 slides, excluding the works cited
slide, informing the class about their person and why they played a major role in American history.
The video will be done in a first-person point of view, making it as if the student creating the video is
the person.
 Final Product: When the presentation is complete, the students will have a downloadable video with
their own voice recordings talking about their person.
 Evaluation or deliverable: Everyone will be graded on whether or not they present the video in front
of the class. They will be graded on if they have at least 7 informational slides about their person.
They will be graded on if they include a works cited slide or not. They will be graded on the quality of
the work they produced; was it an informational video in the first-person point of view?

Reflective Practice

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 Lesson Idea
Because the students can download their Adobe Spark videos, they are able to post them on YouTube, a
personal blog, a classroom blog, or other social media accounts. This is a way that the world can see the
work of the students. Something additional that I could encourage for this assignment is there is a
feature where the students can upload a video to their Adobe Spark presentation; I could encourage the
students to create a video of them dressed up as their person talking for one of the slides.

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