Teaching the Civil Rights Movement

Evidence:

1. Lessons Folder

Context:

• Last week we were tasked with designing two back to back mini-lessons. My unit is on the 1960s Civil Rights Movement: the Who, What, When, Where, and Why? In the big picture, I've broken my unit up into 3 sections. The first section is the opening where I provide an overview necessary for students to understand the background for the unit. This is also the time when I preassess students' learning in order to gauge the students' knowledge and ability up to this point. I have to anticipate that I will need to review prereading strategies, vocabulary, and content during the opening section. I must also consider the accommodations matrix for the current set of students. I will not be formally assessing the students' learning during this time. 

• Performance Criterion 2.1:  Candidates use an understanding of individual differences to design inclusive learning experiences. (Accommodations Matrix, including a diverse curriculum)

• Performance Criterion 3.1: Candidates design learning environments that support individual learning marked by active engagement. (Student presentations, Flipped classroom, Choice in readings)

Mini-Lessons

• In my previous lesson we focused on some useful vocabulary in order to provide background knowledge. Today's lesson is designed as a practice lesson for students to get familiar with prereading strategies and a handful of prominent Civil Rights activists such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr, Ruby Bridges, and Jackie Robinson. I gathered resources from a variety of websites including Ducksters.com and TeacherVision.com. The goal of today was to preassess the following standards: 

D2.His.11.6-8. Use other historical sources to infer a plausible maker, date, place of origin, and intended audience for historical sources where this information is not easily identified.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.6 Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.

By teaching the two lessons back to back, I was able to gain valuable insight as to the ability and style of my class. In the first lesson you go in blind and have to trust your lesson plan for the day. However, by thef second lesson you have gained all the information you need to teach well. The second lesson is different because you have established a rapport with your students. As a result, I modified my lesson to include more confidence-boosting accommodations because I learned that they worked well with the texts but were less confident in history as a subject area. What I realized was that I had to establish trust with my students in Social Studies that I would not give them more than they could handle. It was the same way they had to establish trust for me in Math in the following lesson.

My pre-assessment revealed to me that some of the students may need review/practice with skills such as note taking and presenting. The students could identify the important dates from the reading, the author's purpose, and the central ideas from the text. By the end of the lessons, the students were able to answer the questions, "Why was the person you researched important to the CRM? What do we remember them for?" Even in the pre-assessment portion of the unit, the lesson is designed to be educational so that when they reach the final assessment they will have already been given multiple opportunities to show their learning over time.

The most important thing I learned from the teaching strategies I employed was how much more interesting teaching becomes when you take the time to reflect on what works and what doesn't work. When I asked my peers what they disliked most about history in middle and high school they answered that it was boring or that they couldn't memorize all the dates for exams and so they did poorly. I admit that my first instinct as a teacher is to make a powerpoint and lecture because that is my own experience in the field. However, when I took the time to design an engaging hands-on lesson it really paid off. This is why my goal for the remainder of the lessons in the unit will be to find creative ways to hook my students in the content. My only challenge will be making sure that I have enough time to complete the activities and connect them with the standards for the final unit.

After teaching these mini lessons, I've learned that I am a "handouts" teacher. I like to be very organized and deliberate with the resources that I make available to students. I also like to plan everything out to the last detail, not to the point that it has to be "perfect" or inflexible but rather so that I can be confident in knowing that everything has the best chance of success. I suppose that in some ways I can be considered old-school because I did not use any technology in this lesson, but there's something to be said for the reliability of paper.

In the future I would like to challenge myself to make my own instruction worksheets instead of using the ones I research online. I think this will be helpful when it comes to student teaching because I will need to show evidence of being able to design my own work in my reach portfolio. My curriculum and literacy courses have shown me how to develop tasks and tools, various methods of assessment, and other instructional strategies. At this time I need to practice creating and using them.

"Same Sun Here" Reflection

Finding Common Ground

The two major themes in this year's Common Read are culture and environmental awareness. These themes are expressed in a variety of ways throughout the book. At the common read event that I attended earlier this evening, we had the opportunity to reflect on what it means to have cultural awareness and what it means to be an activist in one's own community. 

Given an array of photos whose intention was to evoke an emotional response, we were asked to choose the photo that resonated most with us. I chose this photo of migrant farm workers because of my involvement in groups such as Juntos, Milk with Dignity, and Migrant Justice at Saint Michael's and in the surrounding community.

As a future educator, and perhaps deeper in my core beliefs, is a calling for advocacy. In the Mission Statement at Saint Mike's, it calls for "social justice" and "cultural responsiveness." One way that I am committed to social justice is by choosing to listen and being present to support my friends here. There are countless underprivileged groups at the college, in the United States, and around the world who have a story to share but not the means to write nor to speak. This is one area where I can help. One of my goals after graduation is to work with migrant or refugee communities and to teach English to speakers of other languages. We all have common ground to stand on even if we are as different as Meena and River in "Same Sun Here." The trick is finding out what we have in common and learning to celebrate our differences as the aspects of ourselves that make us truly unique.

Finally, I took away a renewed belief in the importance of respect for our differences. Respect lies at the center of healthy dialogue and relationships. Without respect you cannot have meaningful conversations with people who disagree with you. The first thing that comes to mind is Facebook battles between people of different political views. In the highly charged political climate today, it can be easy to fall into the cycle of not listening to people who disagree with you whether in person or online. No matter what kind of activism I am involved in, I prioritize respect and the right to disagree. In the classroom, my political views are not what are the most important. It does not matter to me if a student has an opposing view, rather what matters is that he or she knows how to express that view with understanding. I want my students to be passionate about learning and to discover what it is that matters most to them. The most important thing I can give students is a space where they feel comfortable enough to have their own opinions and have the right to disagree, knowing that even if I disagree with them on a personal level, I will always be their advocate.

What is Boycott Wendy's?

Vocabulary Lesson

Lesson Video

Lesson Plan
Google Slide


For my first lesson in designing a unit on the Civil Rights Movement in the United States I chose to create an activity to define "segregation." Although my content area is history, I believe that literacy plays an enormous role in laying the foundation for any lesson. In this case, before I can begin teaching about the 1960s, I need to make sure that my students have a firm grasp on some intermediate vocabulary. In this mini-lesson I had two goals: first was for students to be able to define/give an example of segregation and the second was to begin teaching students how to read visual primary source documents.

I have chosen to tag the following Performance Criterion:

• Performance Criterion 1.1: Candidates use an understanding of learning theory (in areas such as cognitive, linguistic, social emotional or physical) to design appropriate learning experiences. 

• Performance Criterion 3.1: Candidates design learning environments that support individual learning marked by active engagement. 

• Performance Criterion 4.1: Candidates accurately communicate central concepts of the discipline.

In order to design a lesson, I had to initially create a lesson plan and take into consideration how students might react to new information. Rather than a traditional lecture-style history class, my intention was to create a space for active engagement in learning, such as a discussion on what "segregation" means to them? In the process, I had to think about the physical use of the classroom, what presentation format to use, and which sources to include. Lastly, as an assessment to determine whether students could accurately communicate the central concepts, I chose to have students answer three open-ended questions: 

1. In your own words, how would you define segregation?

2. Do you think learning about segregation is important?

3. Is it still relevant today? Why or why not?

Reflection- After watching my lesson afterwards on video and reading feedback from my peers, I learned some valuable lessons about my teaching. Most notably, I need to be more flexible when experiencing technical difficulties. When my YouTube video wouldn't play, I should have had an alternative in place. Perhaps the most important lesson I learned was to always have a backup plan that is low-tech and easily accessible. In terms of the assessments, I decided off the cuff not to have the students hand in their question sheets. The reason why I did this was so that the students would have a chance to be truly honest and the only way to accomplish that was to have it be confidential. I realized that topics like segregation are not always easy to talk about and I so I wanted my first lesson to be one that had students walking away in thought rather than handing in an exit slip with what they think I wanted them to say. I know that I was effective at teaching the vocabulary despite not collecting the assessments because the students were able to provide examples of segregation from history and were able to discuss key historical figures such as Rosa Parks too.

What I took away from this assignment about teaching vocab in my content area is that the terminology is often rooted in larger concepts. I am not teaching a single word but rather opening a door to a new realm of study. As a result, I am responsible for creating an honest space where it is acceptable for students to respectfully disagree with one another and think critically. One way I could have taught "segregation" was to teach the concept using a fruit basket where students separate out the different color fruits (green apple, pear, lime, etc. vs. red apple, strawberry, cherry, etc.) but in the end we are talking about real people and history that has impacted millions of people. There is a certain gravity in teaching history where you have to balance the reverence of a given topic and the fun of learning about it. The goal of my next lesson will be to find correct balance between the two. 

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