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Danielle French Heather Besse Diana Delgado Lesson Plan Improvement

Our lesson plan asks students (grades 9 - 12) to write a tribute to their favorite teacher who has made a significant impact in their life. They are asked to use resources such as books, movies, and poetry. This task, at its heart, is asking students to write a five paragraph persuasive essay using all of the typical writing steps (brainstorming, drafting, editing, and final copy). This task allows students to work on their persuasive essay skills as well develop their higher order thinking skills. We chose this lesson plan because we are all interested in high school education and think that this prompt would help students develop their college application essay skills.  We are interested in including a movie/podcast element to this lesson to potentially improve it. Students can either read their essay or complete an interview with their favorite teacher by podcast and then will set the podcast to video or a picture slideshow using Windows Movie Maker to create a multidimensional project.  By placing voice and pictures to a very personal topic, we believe that students will be able to enhance their message, add personality to their final product, and be able to visually represent their essay. This allows all types of learners (kinesthetic, visual, oral, and auditory) to reach their learning goals.  We believe that this would significantly increase the engagement and motivation for all students. By reaching all types of learning styles and the final product is more exciting than your typical five paragraph essay.  Teaching is not a single dimension task. By opening our students' to a multidimensional project we can teach them how to represent one piece of work in many different forms. This is a direct reflection in our quest as teachers as we strive to reach many different learners with the same information. 
 * 1. **  ** Why did you choose this lesson? Brief summary or original lesson plan design/goals of lesson. **
 * 2. **  **Which tool or tools did you choose to incorporate into this lesson to potentially improve it? **
 * 3. **  **<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Why did you choose this tool(s)? **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">
 * <span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">4. **  **<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Do you feel this tool would improve or engage the learner and why? **<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">
 * <span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">5. **  **<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Do you feel this will improve your teaching? If so, why? **<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">