Blog Entry 6

This week was a challenging week due to the way that I planned the early lessons of the week. In the first few lessons of the week, I had a difficult time with doing too much direct instruction in my lessons. Students became bored with the class because I was simply talking too much. I had things planned that were more constructivist, yet I simply didn’t get to them when I would’ve liked to due to having too many notes. In the future, I need to trim down my notes so that I can do more of the activities that I want to do.

On the first days of this week, we worked on a political cartoon activity (turned it in) and then worked on notes. After the notes, students worked with partners in order to analyze political cartoons. On the second day, we worked on notes, an interactive map, and a loyalist and patriot presentation. The problem was that there was a bit too much direct instruction. 

In the future, I am going to try to use less direct instruction and more activities, as I had originally intended. The rest of the week went well in this regard, as I was able use a mixture of interaction, direct instruction, and individual classwork. 

Week 5 Blog

This week was another week of my plans, but was mostly dedicated to the test, study guide, and review game lessons of the week.

On the first day of the week, I opened by giving the students a review game of my mentor teacher's design. For the classes that struggles with the chapter 3 section 4 outline, I went over it so that they could get the answers to them. Most students worked pretty well on the outline, but a few had a problem with packing up early. This is an ongoing problem that I need to find ways to solve in my classroom. In general, I feel that this lesson went well otherwise.

On the second day, students played a review game of my design after we went over the answers to the study guide. The game was a battleship game, and students seemed to like the way it was designed. Timewise, it worked out perfectly -- we had time for just one game in each period before the bell was just about to ring. In general, it felt like a few students were able to carry the class as far as answers went.

On day three, it was test day. I made the appropriate accommodations for students who needed test accommodations, and students took their test for the whole period. If they had time at the end of the test, they had the opportunity to work on the next chapters vocabulary.

The next day was the beginning of chapter 4. I felt that this lesson went very well, and that students responded well to the quotes, pictures, and music video that was presented as part of the lesson. One thing that I was able to gather from this lesson, with helpful feedback from my mentor teacher, was that I should plan transitions specifically (eg. when do I turn projectors off? collect papers? how can I save time in lessons to more effectively use time?). This is something I will incorporate in my future plans when necessary so that my lessons run more smoothly. Other than that, I felt that my content and examples really reached students well.

On Friday, we focused on beginning current events, working on a map pre-test, working on the chapter map, and finishing up the weeks work (political cartoon and vocab). The big problem here was, again, students packing up early. In the future (particularly on Fridays) I will need to have extra assignments ready in order to dangle them over the heads of students so that they are motivated to work on what they have -- especially since many students are not actually "done" with all of their work, but are merely saying that they are. Also, this provides students who are finished with something to do so that learning continues.

Week 4 Blog Reflections

In my PDS this week, I took over two classes in order to teach classroom lessons. These lessons focused on material for chapter 3: the difference between colonial sets and the French and Indian wars. In these lessons, I tried to balance direct instruction with more constructivist methods as well (group work, product creation, etc).

On day one, we took some notes on section one (mercantilism and other economic policies) first. I tried to keep these at a reasonable length. I think this was a wise decision, and worked well for the students. Next, we transitioned to a graphic organizer activity in order to help students organize their thoughts. In this activity, students compared and contrasted mercantilism with capitalism. This is an important concept to highlight as it shows comparisons to today's world. Finally, we transitioned to an activity in which students engaged in role-play in order to construct a dialogue script about how policies such as mercantilism, the navigation acts, and salutary neglect effect the daily lives of colonists in the Americas. I felt like in general, the lesson was planned out well enough and highlighted important materials. Students seemed to like the dialogue activity and generally worked well. Things that could've went better included the execution of activities and and the volume of my direct instruction. These are management things that I will work on, and hopefully improve with time.

On days two and three we talked about differences between the southern and northern sets of colonies to begin with this, we took some notes in order to get kick started on the topic. On the first day, we also worked in order to analyze colonial courtship. Students examined prompts about different cultural methods of courtship (including diverse populations such as Enslaved Africans). In addition , students created illustrations which emphasized the differences between the colonies. I felt that these lessons went well but were problamitized by some of the same issues.

On the final two days, we worked on a chapter map, outline, and current events. These activities went well, but suffered from time management issues. In the future, I need to encourage students to use more of their time in order to discuss the current events that they did. The reason for using the map was that it was pertinent to my research activities.

Blog Entry Week 3

     In my PDS this week, I was in control of a single class period. This week, we worked on preparing for the test, taking the test, and a culminating activity for the colony project.

In general, this week was kind of a supervision week -- making sure students were on task, doing what they were supposed to do etc. I did, however, get to run my first review game of the year. Most of the classes went rather well, but a few classes did get out of hand with their competitiveness. This was also a problem with the culminating activity on Friday. What I've learned this week is that I need to put more work into developing a more stern teacher demeanor. Basically, I need to improve my classroom management by showing the students that I mean business. Going forward, this will be an area that I focus on improving.

I did my first full week of planning my own lessons and activities -- for next week. I am assuming control of two different classes this week. I am both excited and nervous about this upcoming week, as this is the first time I am teaching from my own plans this year. I worked hard on creating good lesson plans for this week, so hopefully everything works out splendidly.

Blog Post- Week 2

This was the second week in my placement, and it involved a fair amount of activity facilitation and observation as well as planning for the rest of the semester.

This week, I was able to take some notes on how the class is usually structured and think deeply about the method by which I need to structure my classtime. It has been expressed that it is difficult for this age group to do more than 15-20 minutes of notes (as it becomes tedious - which is understandable), so it is recommended that I balance each day with discussions, activities, and projects. This is similar to the way that I did my lessons in years passed, so this transition should be natural for me.

As for wonderings, I was able to formulate a rough research question dealing with the use of maps (particularly interactive maps and GIS) in the classroom. Basically, I want to know how the use of interactive maps in 10th grade US history classrooms affects the achievement in tasks relating to map literacy and attitudes towards maps and map assessments. As time goes on, I will refine this wondering into a more polished research question.