Wednesday October 7, 2009

Stage 1 – Desired Results
Established Goals:
2.1.3 Clarify an understanding of text by creating notes
3.1.1 Generate ideas using a variety of strategies
3.1.2 Generate a main idea or thesis appropriate to a type of writing

Understandings:
Students will understand that…
• Communities use rites of passage to initiate members
• Ceremonies/rituals are very important symbols to communities
• The values and beliefs of a community are passed on from generation to generation through these rites/ceremonies.
• All communities have some rite of passage.

Essential Questions:
What are rites of passage?
Who participates in rites of passage?
What place do rites have in communities?


Students will know…
Vocab: Rite, passage,

Students will be able to…
• Summarize and organize pertinent information from text.
• Identify, discuss and defend different rites of passage in their lives.
• Restate a concept in their own thesis statement



Stage 2 – Assessment Evidence

Performance Tasks:
• Group Dual entry diary
• Group competition



Other Evidence:
• Group participation
• Exit ticket (Thesis sentence)

Stage 3 – Learning Plan


Learning Activities:
1. GW compile Diary for Chapter 5
2. TW introduce background info for “Rites of passage”
3. GW read rites document in pairs then WW read as a class.
4. GW list different rites of passages in the communities they belong to
5. TW give journal prompt


LESSON REFLECTION

1. What worked best in the lesson?
I think the best thing about this lesson was the way that the lesson lead them to a full understanding of rites of passage. It was designed to go from a basic grasp on the idea (the reading), then to have them list some examples from their own experiences, followed by some unique/interesting examples from across the world, ending up with an application of their new understanding to the novel we are reading. I am very proud of the progression of the lesson and feel that it worked rather well in all three of the classes.

2. What would you do differently?
If I were to teaqch this lesson again, I would re-think the setup of the competition. When I wrote the lesson, I had originally assumed that the students would really only be able to come up with about 6 or 7 rites of passage per group and that the actual competition wouldn’t last more than about 10 minutes (groups alternated writing one of their examples at a time on the board until only one group was left with idea to write on board), but if I would not have found a way to end it, it probably could have gone on a good portion of the period. I had to result to a sudden death round to get the competition to end and felt that it was a bit rushed and somewhat unfair of a way to end the activity. I can’t say I really know yet how to end it more effectively/fairly, but I would certainly put a lot of thought into it and figure something out so I didn’t end up with the angry students that I did with this approach.

3. How did you determine what instructional models to use?
Well, the layout of my classroom and the theme (community) of this unit have lead me to look for ways to do cooperative learning in any way I can, so I would say this was the determining factor in my lesson planning.

4. Did you accomplish the objectives of the lesson?
I do believe that I accomplished the goal of the lesson because it was to get them to understand what a rite of passage was and then get them to see its significance in the novel we are reading. In each of thee classes I did a quick survey of the students to see who already knew what a rite of passage was, and only one student out of all three classes went into this lesson with a firm grasp on the concept, at the end, I can safely say that 99% of the students understand and can list a number of examples both experiential and written to show their comprehension. The journal that they wrote at the end of class is a testament to their understanding of the lesson.

5. How were you able to actively engage the students?
I engaged the students by having cooperative activities, competition, and multiple medias throughout the lesson. By making the students read the rites of passage handout to each other, they had to be actively engaged. The competition always excites kids and get them a little more into a lesson. And when expanding their schema near the end of the lesson, I had them watch a very interesting, somewhat graphic example of rites of passage around the world and I felt that this drew the kids in and reinforced some of the concepts that we had been discussing throughout the lesson.

6. How was the lesson pacing?
This is one of the main aspects of the lesson that needs to be reexamined. This is primarily because I had underestimated the amount of time the competition was going to take and this did not leave quite as much time as I would have hoped for at the end of the lesson for the students to do a thorough journal entry. As it turned out, the kids only really had about 10 minutes to do their entry (and factoring in that most students are pretty much useless the last 2 or 3 minutes of class there was even less than 10).

7. How was classroom management?
The fact that I had things for the kids to do from the second they stepped into the classroom till the second they left, there was not really any classroom management issues, also I’d like to think that the material was of interest to them so they were into the lesson and participated fully. There were some slight issues with my bigger/louder class with volume levels during the competition, but this is an issue I struggle with daily in this period, and that I figured would only be exacerbated by the class wide competition. But the noise was (as far as I could tell) on task noise and did not really take away from the learning environment, and I feel that if harnessed this kind of energy can really feed the education/student motivation.

8. How were you able to account for individual differences?
I tried to teach for different learning styles with elements for visual learners and elements for verbal and kinesthetic learners in the lesson. I also tried to account for cultural differences by using multiple different cultural rites in my examples, and encouraging students from other cultures (primarily Hispanic cultures) to think of specific examples that they had to contribute to their groups lists.

9. How where your discussion skills?
I felt a little uncomfortable with the discussion about the reading at the start of class because, I will be the first to admit it, the reading that I gave them was a little dense and had some harder concepts/vocab in it. This was also tricky because one of the best ways to really help the kids understand the idea of rites of passage is to provide examples for them, but I did not want to spoil the competition that we were about to have or give them too many ideas right off the bat, I wanted them to make the connections on their own, so I ended up focusing a lot of vocabulary and the few examples given in the reading itself. I would not say that this was one of the best discussions we’ve ever had in the class, but it wasn’t supposed to be holistic by any means, it was just supposed to provide a a basic schema for the kids to start building on.

10. How well did you monitor group work?
This was one of the things I am starting to do particularly well. As I have been doing quite a bit of cooperative lessons recently, I am starting to get a good grasp on the group dynamics and who is participating/on task and who is not, as well as steps that should be taken to reengage/refocus certain students/groups.

11. Transitions?
This was a very connected lesson, so I don’t think there was any transition that did not make sense and did not go smoothly. While this has been something that I do feel I have struggled with in past lessons, I don’t think it was a problem at all here.

12. Were your materials appropriate for the lesson objectives?
I feel that my materials were extremely appropriate for this lesson. I had them read, I had them watch, I had them write on the board and in their journals. I figure if you have a little bit of everything you are probably on the right track.

13. Were you objectives in the zone of proximal development?
As I was assuming that most of the students did not have any understanding of the topic of this lesson I was starting at the bottom zone of proximal development and step-by-step asking them to identify and apply their understanding as it grew. I feel that learning occurred and that it was scaffolded in appropriate/effective ways.

14. How did you collaborate with others in the planning of/or teaching of this lesson?
I did not participate with any others in the planning of this lesson. I did receive some helpful advice on small things I could do differently in the competition from my lead teacher, but that was really about all.

15. What did you learn about yourself as a teacher from this experience?
I learned that designing and implementing a good lesson is a lot of fun! I wasn’t too sure about how things would go at the start of the lesson and definitely had butterflies in my stomach before the first period (because I’d never done a lesson like this before), but it went really well and I had a major adrenaline high at the end of the day, and that was really nice and encouraging. I also think I learned that I’m pretty good at thinking on my feet. When I realized that time was not on my side during the lesson, I was able to come up with a solution to my dilemma very quickly and had the confidence to go with my gut instincts, which luckily, proved to be good. Hopefully my gut will continue to provide good advice in the future.