The next day, we performed an inquiry lesson. Before the lesson, we reviewed by putting up pictures of battles we taught them on Monday. After the review, we explained the Scientific Method. First, I asked them what the steps were and then I provided more details about the steps. After I explained the steps, Ainsley explained the activity. We put the students into 5 groups and gave them 5 paper bags, a word, a picture, and an handout. Each group was assigned a person or group. In the paper bags are clues. The students must read the clues to figure out who their person or group they have. The word and picture were connected to their person or group. On the handout, the students had to write their hypotheses on who they think their person or group was. After that, as a class each group opened each bag together. In the bags were two or three sentences and a question about the sentences. The answers to questions were the clues so they had to fill out the clues on the handout. After the opened all of the bags containing the clues, the students got to open one last bag that contained the person or group's picture and name. Students got to see if their hypotheses were correct or incorrect. After they finished, the students got to present their hypotheses and clues to the class. This activity overall went pretty smooth. I believe that the activity was pretty straightforward. Students got to use their inquiry and reasoning skills to guess who their person or group was as they read the clues. After the students presented, we gave them their independent practice which was to write a letter as the person or group to anyone explaining the American Revolution during their time and their contributions to the war. The students did get very loud at some times during the lesson, so I tried to get them to lower their voices. The students seemed to have enjoyed this activity.
Our third lesson was a cooperative lesson. For review, we had a matching activity. The matching activity was a SmartBoard activity where the students had to come up and drag a word to the correct definition or description. This failed a little since it took longer than expected and students were struggling with dragging the word. The students as a class got confused between two definitions and I didn't know how to tell them that it wasn't correct. Next time, I would ask if the whole class agrees or disagrees before we go to the next word. After the review, I asked the students what teamwork and working cooperatively means and provided more detail for them. For our activity, they were to work in groups and each person in the group had an individual role. We provided the roles on the board and gave them tips on how to act and behave in a group. After that, we gave them assigned roles. Many students wanted to switch roles but it was probably best if they didn't. One student was very upset with her role and I realized that it was probably best if we let them switch since we don't know their strengths, weaknesses, likes, and dislikes. For the activity, we gave the students cards , pictures, and descriptions of seven different people. The students had to read the descriptions and make trading cards of the seven people. The students had to use the pictures to glue them on the front of the card and then on the back, they had to include the name of the person, date of birth, the place of birth, and 2-4 sentences about that person. The roles were a timekeeper, researcher, illustrator, group leader, and editor. Overall, the students completed their roles and successfully finished their cards. After they finished their cards, they presented one card to the class. After every group presented, the students filled out a group and self evaluation. The only thing I did notice is everyone else finished their roles expect the researcher and writer and the rest of the students helped them. Next time, I would have had them complete 5 instead of 7 cards so everyone does their individual role and finished around the same time. I was impressed at how well they worked on this activity and how well this activity weird.
Overall, I've learned many things during this experience. I have gained more confidence and it was interesting to see the students complete our lesson plans. Teaching the American Revolution was very rewarding and I'm glad to have experienced it.
Amanda,
ReplyDeleteYour blog started out strong by stating how you felt about fieldwork before entering the classroom. It is very important to reflect on your feelings before, during, and after teaching and I think you did that very well. The explanation of the direct lesson plan is very detailed. By stating what was done during the lesson step by step, and then reflecting on each piece, I found it very beneficial. It was easy for me to see how you grew and became more confident and aware during the lesson from beginning to end. It was also very useful to do this for the direct, inquiry, and cooperative lesson. I wish that you could have included what you learned during this experience a little more in depth.
Amanda,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that throughout this blog on your fieldwork experience, you speak to the situations that arose in which you felt lost and struggled to develop a course of action. For example, in the direct instruction lesson, you wrote: "Many students were confused and I didn't know what to do at first. I told the students that both battles were turning points for different reasons, even though it only says that the Battle of Saratoga was a turning point in the war." Recognizing your errors and rethinking what could be improved upon in hindsight will help you to improve your teaching, because next time should the same problem arise, you will already have steps for handling it. Dewey, a renowned philosopher of education, asserted that: "the measure of the value of an experience lies in the perception of relationships or continuities to which it leads up. It includes cognition in the degree in which it is cumulative or amounts to something, or has meaning" (1916/1944, p. 140). In other words, had you only taught the lesson and made mistakes, the experience would not have been nearly as valuable as it now that you have taught, made mistakes, and reflected upon them to determine how to improve. Keeping in mind that teaching is a constant learning process, I would challenge you to consider how you could have expanded students' higher-order thinking skills (Bloom's Taxonomy) throughout the unit. You and Ainsley incorporated a lot of descriptive writing into your lessons, which shows integration of English Language Arts, but it might have been more beneficial to have students compare, contrast, and evaluate. For example, for your cooperative learning lesson, after having students create their trading cards, students could have been required to assign a point value to each card based on the importance of the individual with an explanation for their evaluation of importance. For instance, George Washington is worth ten points because he was the leader, and critical in many of the battles, while Paul Revere is only worth four points because he is really only known for one job.