BLOG WEEK 7

This week, we worked through the last parts of the chapter (chapter 4) and did a formal, summarize assessment on the chapter.


On Monday, we began an assignment in which students created a newspaper about key events of the revolutionary war. I think that this lesson went well because students were engaged in learning through the use of discovery of certain events as well as using teamwork in order to divide responsibilities. However, one area of weakness was my firmness on due dates. In the future, I will make sure to have clearer instructions and precise due dates. After looking at finished products, I found that students, for the last part, have done a lot better than expected with this assignment. Nearly every student (of whom I have seen examples for) achieved mastery on this assignment. This, I am satisfied with the level of learning this assignment produced

On Tuesday, our students continued working on the assignment from the previous day. However, students were able to visualize the instructions because I projected it on the projector. This was very helpful as students were fully aware of what the expectations were for this assignment.

On Wednesday, students worked to complete the study guide for the chapter 5 test. The early periods of the day worked much harder than the later period. As a discipline method, my mentor teacher decided upon making the later periods have to do the essay on the test while other periods did not. Hopefully they will learn that they need to work on their classwork the whole period instead of packing up early or not working.

Thursday, we did the review game for this test. Again, the earlier period of the day did much better than the later periods as a whole class. I will look at the test scores and determine if this was reflected in the scores or if it is more of a motivation issue. In general, the review game went decently well. However, there were some management issues where students needed to be prompted to task in order to continue the game. This is not a huge issue, but it does need to be addressed. Students seemed to understand the game and the directions for the game rather well, and in general seemed to enjoy it.

On Friday, we did the test for chapter 5. In general, students seemed to think the test wasn't so bad and that they did well. Hopefully this confidence comes from a place of studying and understanding of material. After I look more closely at the assessment data, I can determine whether or not this is so.