Activity type in Language Arts

The activity type approach makes sense on many levels. For instance, by choosing student goals and objectives first, one insures that activities we use have some sort of measurable outcome. We need to plan effective lessons that could be used without technology, and then think about how technology might enhance the lesson. The continuums are also helpful to determine how teacher or student centric one wishes a lesson to be. In my English methods class, we learn a student centered, constructivist approach to designing lesson. Constructivists want students to be active, engaged learners, who construct their own knowledge. We also learn that lesson design is a process of pre-planning, planning, and post-planning. In the AT approach to lesson design, we would incorporate graphic organizers into a vocabulary lesson during the planning phase, after we had designed the bulk of our lesson. The content specific taxonomies are certainly helpful in designing instruction. For instance, as a Language Arts teacher, I can see what technologies might be helpful for pre-reading, reading, and post-reading instructional strategies. I can see how technology might assist the analysis and synthesis of literature which post reading requires.