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.