Thing Link Lesson Plan: By Peter Nguyen, Alex Alonso, Nat Fur,

Marilyn
Use The Link Below to See The Thing Link Example:
https://www.thinglink.com/scene/577259790799994882
Username: nathaniel.furr@gmail.com PW: PoppleTopGroup

Endorsement
Subject
Class
Unit
Lesson
Resources
Standard

Introduction

Elementary Education
Social Studies
US History and Geography
Learning the 50 States
State Research: Finding Interesting Things About Your State
Print: Books, Articles, Encyclopedias
Non Print: Websites
With this lesson, students will meet the National Educational Technology
Standards. This specific standard met will be the Nebraska Standard 4.1.1
for fourth graders. Students will not only learn different researching
methods for their state, they will also have to be able describe significant
events that occurred in that state. Students will need to have a good
understanding of how the significant events happened and why it is
important to the present day society within that state. In addition to this,
students will also broaden their overall schema on each state that the
students are to research. Another huge concept about this lesson is that the
students will also have to present this to their class. This will really test
how well they know their topic and how well they present it to their peers.
This can be very challenging, and with this lesson, it will benefit them
immensely. Not only is this lesson beneficial to their history and
geography knowledge, this will also have them reach the National
Educational Technology Standards as well because they will need to be
able to integrate their facts into Thing Link, a IT visual tool. Overall,
students will be forced to use a wide base of knowledge in order to
complete this lesson in an appropriate manner.
This project will enhance their understanding of a state of their choice that
really interests them. Students will then be able to pick and choose which
events that happened within this state that they think is most significant to
not only that states past, but also to their present day society. Students will
not only be able to tell us the names of the events that occurred in these
states, they will also be able to go in depth and explain to the class through
their presentation exactly what happened and why it happened. This aspect
is included mainly so that the students can see the significance of change
over time. This project also integrates presentation which promotes better
public speaking skills and a sense of community within the class. In order
for the students to really get the most out of this assignment, students will
really need to put forth effort into finding interesting facts, and events in
which they can really go in depth about with passion.

Technology
Uses/Materials
Needed

Objectives

Preparing the
Student

Assessment of
Student Learning

Lesson Sequence

Students will need a computer or laptop to not only do research for their
state, but to also create their thing link. If students do not have resources at
home such as internet connection, they will be provided with a laptop at
school and given class time to finish this project. They will also be given
time in the library to find either an article or a book to further enhance
their research. They will also need to have one print resource for this
project so the library utilization will be essential.
Objective 1: Students will obtain different strategies on how to research
and be able to not only maneuver through the internet to find resources, but
they will also need to be able to maneuver through the library to find
printed sources (books, articles). This will enhance their library and
internet knowledge.
Objective 2: Students will be able to research, understand, and be able to
relate why historical events continue to affect the present time within that
state.
Objective 3: Students will also need to learn how to cite their sources.
To prepare the students for this lesson, students will need to do research
beforehand on the significant event or locations in their particular state.
Students will also need to have at least a brief understanding of speaking
methods, and know what good and effective listeners look like because not
only is that respectful, they will need it later on for their formative
assessment. The instructors must also briefly go over how to use thing link
so that the students arent left trying to figure out how to work this
program because that would not be very time efficient.
Assessments of Student Learning (formative and summative/individual
and group; Blooms Taxonomy)
Create: Students will create a presentation for the class.
Evaluate: Students will evaluate others work through the presentations
and the information that they find through their resources.
Analyze: Students will be analyzing information about their state and other
students states through information provided.
Apply: Students will be able to use information gathered through research
and apply it to their thinglink visual presentation.
Understand: Students must understand the assignment given and the big
concept to apply to other events.
Remember: Students will remember the information gathered through their
research and be able to present to the class about the significant events in
their states.
1. Upon completion of the assignment, students will walk away
knowing a lot more about a wide variety of states, along with a
better sense of how to speak in a public setting.
2. Students will pair up and choose a state that they will end up doing
a project on and then present what they have learned to the class.
3. Upon selecting their state they will then have class time to do some

Measurement of
Success

research. They will need to find at least five distinct locations or

events that they will present.
4. Next the students will need to make a ThingLink account, this is
where they will be creating their presentation.
5. The students will then begin creating their presentation. To do so
they will be using a map of their state, and then including links on
that map that correspond to the location of the event that they are
going to be explaining.
6. In total there will be a map of their state with five different links in
five different locations. These links will then take the user to an
external site that will help explain the event to the class.
7. After that, the students will then need to complete a Bibliography
of at least 3 sources. 1 source being a printed source.
8.
Upon completion of this they will be ready to present, they will just
need to be able to go up in front of the class and explain the five important
events within their state.
Students will be asked to provide one question over their presentation that
will be answered by everyone in the classroom. In doing this, students will
be quizzed on what they learned through other students presentations.
This will prove how well the students retained the information presented to
them, and also how well the presenters displayed their information. Not
only is this a good formative assessment to see what they got out of the
lesson, you can decide what the students grade should be through this
assessment. Metacognition will be applied because they will have to think
about thinking when they are presenting. They will need to think about
how and when they want to present their information. That is definitely
forcing the students to think about their own thought processes. This is a
great lesson plan to start off a unit. We used this on states, but you could
definitely use this on a historical figure such as Abe Lincoln, Napoleon
Bonaparte etc. After kids have presented you could go over more specific
aspects of that figure. We will definitely use this again because this really
engages all the students and really forces them to utilize their time
effectively. Students will not only be graded on their final product, they
will be graded on their utilization of class time, and how respectful they
were when other students were presenting.

http://nlcs1.nlc.state.ne.us/epubs/E2000/R057-2003.pdf