How did you (and your partner) prepare?
I worked with Michael Sacca, overall our lesson went well. We worked on the American Civil War. We started working on the lesson as soon as possible which gave us plenty of time to get materials and gather ideas for the lesson. We were doing Civil War bingo, we needed plenty of materials such as beans, bingo board, prizes, podcast, video, a powerpoint presentation and typed notes handouts. The night before we checked the video clip, podcast and the powerpoint presentation to see if the information was correct. Also we review the whole lesson the night before and we planned how students would be seated in class.
Explain the objective and assessment measures of your lesson
The objective was to understand and identify four facts on the Civil War. We explained the importance of the Civil War in the bingo game. The way we assessed the students was by the bingo game, when students received bingo he or she will stated four facts according to the bingo card the student selected. If they do not know the answer, they could asked for help by asking a classmate, this will give others a chance to answer the question correctly.
Was your lesson plan executed exactly as it was written?
For the most part, our lesson was executed fine. Our error was not to show the podcast. We though the video was sufficient for the lesson, our podcast involve us stating the Gettysburg Address. We were the second group to presented and I witness the first group’s podcast to be too long and boring so with that we decided not to show our podcast. I regret not showing it because it was a great podcast with our voices stating it and it was not too long as the rest of the podcasts.
What was the most important thing I tried to teach your students?
The most important ideas I tried to teach the student was the causes and effects of the Civil War. The main figures of the war. Also the impact of the battles to both sides of the war. We used plenty of visuals to show students how people were effected by the war.
How do you think it went?
I think the lesson went great, students were mostly behaved for the most part, but there were some students that were out of hand. We kept them in control for the most part.
What did you learn from your students?
I learned for the students I need to be more flexible and be prepared for anything. Students will get bored easily if they do not have any passion for History. Students will cause a chain reaction. If a student is behaving out of line than other students will follow. If that occurs, I need to put a stop to it before it gets out of hand.
What would you have done differently?
What I would have done differently is to changed the beans to something else and I will supply students will tiny cups so they could put the things in. We should of had a written assignment, a better homework idea. Also we should have played our podcast, which was not to long.
How could you have made the lesson even more effective?
We should have made two more podcast one on the Gettysburg Address and the other on the causes and effect of the war.
What do you think you need to improve or do differently?
I need to improve on being relax and claim for the next lesson. Also we needed to have a podcast for the next lesson.
Reflection of Podcast
How did you and your partner plan to use the podcast in your lesson?
We planned to use the podcast in the beginning of class and use the podcast to breakdown the speech line by line for the students. The podcast was perfect to use for the lesson but we decided last second to ditch the podcast which we worked on so hard days before.
Did you use it during the class lesson? Why or why not?
We did not use the podcast because the group before had a negative reaction from the students. I regret not using our podcast, it was for our advantage.
Do you have any other ideas of how you would use podcasting in your lesson or future lessons?
Next time I will use the podcast to my advantage, I will use podcast for those students who learn better by hearing. I want to make my podcast exciting for my students to hear but most importantly I want to teach my students on how to use for it for study guides,
Reflection of other classmates' lessons
I enjoyed all the lesson, what I liked the most was how creative the lessons were but there were few lessons that were boring. There were a few lesson that needed to be exciting because students were misbehaving which cause a chain reaction and lead to others students to follow that path as well. The cards made students act out and some lessons went out of control and the students took over the lessons.
On the other side, majority of the lessons were great. They had exciting concepts, one lesson that elementary students would enjoy is when students dressed in shapes in one of the math class, that was fun and I could imagine students having a blast with this one.
