Teaching the West: Day 2

Thinking back to the metaphor for teaching I wrote in my first blog, this lesson was a much smoother ride for me. Some of the transitions (shifts) weren't quite as nice as I would've liked them, but all in all, the lesson went well. In terms of revising that metaphor, I'd say that even more than I'd thought before, it's important to note that the "car" (the class/students) plays a much larger role in determining how the class runs as they respond to the teacher's lesson. Mostly, it's a reaction to the teaching, but that reaction make a big difference in how things go. So, I like the metaphor still, if only cars were more independent and less machine-like in their responses.

The period began with a "do now" type activity on the board. Students sat at their regular seats when they came in, and began answering the questions on the board (I'd placed an index card on each desk). Students who were absent the day before were instructed to look at pg 140 in their textbook and answer the second question on the board. For one of the students, who couldn't read the questions on the board, I read them aloud and had him answer them on his card. For another student who generally tunes out and doesn't participate in class (to the point that I don't think he's getting much of anything out of being at school), I tried to scaffold his thinking with questions about what happened the day before (though I ended up giving him the answers since he couldn't remember anything--or didn't tell me). After 5 minutes or so, we reviewed the answers to questions.

Then, we reviewed the two states we had talked about the day before (Montana and Idaho). I had two students come up and point those states out on the map, then I had each student write those two names down on a map organizer I had placed face-down on each of their desks while they were answering the questions on the board.

I then explained their research project to them (natural areas in the Western US: Yellowstone, Death Valley, Glacier National Park, Mt St Helen's, Redwood Forest) and showed them their groups (which I'd written on the chalkboard, to the right of the "do now" questions). Students assembled into their respective groups and I passed out a packet to each of them. This part of the lesson was the least smooth--according to Jen it took about 2 minutes to get into groups and get things passed out. Also, students seemed unsure about what to bring with them, how to answer the questions (I forgot to tell them about the information in the packets), and throughout the time in groups, were frequently distracted by both the rubric in the packet (which I also hadn't talked about) and the idea of how to make their presentations creative. Timing of the group work worked okay, though--15 minutes for questions, 10 minutes for the graphic organizer.

I think the greatest fault of the activity was that there were many kids who tuned out or got left behind in the rush of the activity, and on the flip side, there were other students (some bossy) who took over the group and/or did most of the work. Jen suggested making sure every student had access to the material, instead of having 5-6 people sharing one packet of information. Also, students within a group could be given roles, so that they must be involved.

Another problem was that the steps of the activity (as noted above) distracted students from the work they were supposed to be doing at the time. I think it would've been better to tell them about the details of the presentation after they completed the research, as opposed to before. Jen also had a good suggestion, that we have a sort of "secret envelope" method, where they had to finish the task in one envelope to get to the next one, and all they know is that the last envelope has a fun activity in it.

Either way, students needed more structure within their groups and less information about the future pieces of the activity than I gave them.

Once the 25 minutes were up, materials were collected, and students returned to their seats. I explained the rubric to them (a "4" presentation vs. a "1" presentation), and then we moved on to state identification. The states for the day were: CA, NV, HI, and AK. Each state was approached in the same way: look at its shape, make a mental image, draw it on your desk with your finger, then discuss how we can remember it (ex. HI looks like dots, and there are two dotted i's at the end of its name, or, CA looks like a banana and lots of fruit is grown in CA).

Students were then reminded about what would happen the next day, under the guidance of Ms Costan, and then let them change classes.

Like I said above, the lesson went really pretty well and I felt a lot more confident about it than I had the day before. I think one of the reasons for that might be that I wrote the lesson plan for this day, whereas Katelyn had written out the lesson plan for the day before (so I was more familiar with this one, whereas she was more familiar with the other). Most importantly, looking at the students' answers to the do-now questions, I felt a lot better about where students were in terms of the KUDs and how they were progressing/what they'd learned.