I reworked some of the lessons. My lesson plans tend to be on the basic open ended side as I tend to grow on the move. I'm still struggling with "did I hit the goal I was aiming at". Any suggestions would be helpful.
This is actually quite good. I still have problems with the word "know" as it is essentially impossible to define what "know" means. You could ask 7 different experts and get7 different responses to what students who "know" would do to demonstrate that "knowing." You can't use the term to drive any sort of meaningful assessment. This is really picky, but you don't have to use "be able to." Students "will describe" -- not " be able to describe" it just cleans up the language a tad.
While this is NOT the purpose of this class I would STRONGLY recommend that when you use videos ie Jamestown--- that rather than showing the entire thing, stop it whenever there is a decision point-- ie what do we do now/next?? and have students actually DISCUSS what choice they would make and why! It is a LOT more engaging that simply showing a flick from start to finish AND that engagement can be channeled into higher level thinking as well as content acquisition and the development of discussion skills
I think that you are working hard to strike a REALLY nice balance between historical content and enduring, contemporary applications. This is ALWAYS tricky ! Some lesson by their very nature HAVE to focus on the historical stuff, BUT Just a thought! at some point you can pull the specific content example into a more general issue that relates to today. This is a REAL challenge and I appreciate your deep thinking around it.
I may have missed it,but you said that it was important to explore the impact of the arrival of Europeans on the indigenous people. I don't see a focus on that --but maybe you're still crafting that.
I'd also think about some way in the lessons to remind yourself about the dispositions and skills that you want to teach. IF you don't attend to it it won't happen in any systematic way. Just DOING group world does not mean that it is done well or that anything is learned about the process UNLESS you actually direct student attention to it.
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Hi Sara
This is actually quite good. I still have problems with the word "know" as it is essentially impossible to define what "know" means. You could ask 7 different experts and get7 different responses to what students who "know" would do to demonstrate that "knowing." You can't use the term to drive any sort of meaningful assessment. This is really picky, but you don't have to use "be able to." Students "will describe" -- not " be able to describe" it just cleans up the language a tad.
While this is NOT the purpose of this class I would STRONGLY recommend that when you use videos ie Jamestown--- that rather than showing the entire thing, stop it whenever there is a decision point-- ie what do we do now/next?? and have students actually DISCUSS what choice they would make and why! It is a LOT more engaging that simply showing a flick from start to finish AND that engagement can be channeled into higher level thinking as well as content acquisition and the development of discussion skills
I think that you are working hard to strike a REALLY nice balance between historical content and enduring, contemporary applications. This is ALWAYS tricky ! Some lesson by their very nature HAVE to focus on the historical stuff, BUT Just a thought! at some point you can pull the specific content example into a more general issue that relates to today. This is a REAL challenge and I appreciate your deep thinking around it.
I may have missed it,but you said that it was important to explore the impact of the arrival of Europeans on the indigenous people. I don't see a focus on that --but maybe you're still crafting that.
I'd also think about some way in the lessons to remind yourself about the dispositions and skills that you want to teach. IF you don't attend to it it won't happen in any systematic way. Just DOING group world does not mean that it is done well or that anything is learned about the process UNLESS you actually direct student attention to it.