Today in each class we picked up where we left off the day before, mostly finishing off political and media definitions. The primary activity of each class today was the difference between the Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. We also did the political preference quiz. To distinguish between the party's I printed out positions on many different issues, had students in group try to place that view under which party or part of the political spectrum might believe that position. I also handed out a broad political and media spectrum that I made so that students can get as to where different political figures fit on the political spectrum. For the most part we didn't get to the media figures so we will catch up on that. The students tried to name each person on the spectrum and then fill in their worksheet.
For the most part the students were excited to see what their political preferences were. This activity definitely got a couple students excited as classroom debate broke out in the Step 5 class. This activity definitely made it seem like it would be a good idea to have some class debates on some of these issues later in the year. Students are very opinionated, and although mostly liberal, have conservative views on things like gay marriage and abortion.
Along with the political preference quiz it was definitely necessary to do some explaining what each question so that students understood the sides of the issue and what each answer meant. The class generally behaved very well today and was engaged in the lesson, even some students who have not been in the past. I was pleased with what we accomplished.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Day 1 (A)- unit overview
So today I started the unit on media literacy. First I was introduced to the class because many of the students are new (having moving in from other classes this trimester). The first class moves a little slower as many students are special ed. or have fewer English language skills. We spent a good deal of time defining media and media literacy with them, trying to provide them with many examples. I went over the schedule, and then began working through the definitions. This class was shortened today because we had a meeting with all students to start the day. We got through about half of the political definitions today. We did the same material with Step 6, but were able to get through the entire introduction, political and media definitions today so we can move onto the political preference quiz tomorrow. Step 5, which is now a huge class, will be a real challenge both in terms of adapting the lessons and classroom management. The class is not arranged very well, prohibiting me from getting to the back of the class, which is where the most management is needed.
My cooperating teacher offered some very good suggestions after the classes. She suggested visuals to go along with the pictures would be very helpful for the first period, Step 4 kids. They have done that in the past. I am already limiting the vocabulary I will use with that class. She also suggested that I re-integrate the fact vs. opinion lesson in the context of media literacy because it is a god think to keep in mind as they learn to analyze and evaluate media for trustworthiness, bias, etc... Tomorrow I need to begin instituting some of the procedural things like what we write on the board (date, class, agenda) at the beginning of each class, and the ground rules for my 2 week unit so they are more clear. This was the most tedious part of the process, once the definitions are out of the way the rest will be much smoother. Tomorrow- political preference quiz!
My cooperating teacher offered some very good suggestions after the classes. She suggested visuals to go along with the pictures would be very helpful for the first period, Step 4 kids. They have done that in the past. I am already limiting the vocabulary I will use with that class. She also suggested that I re-integrate the fact vs. opinion lesson in the context of media literacy because it is a god think to keep in mind as they learn to analyze and evaluate media for trustworthiness, bias, etc... Tomorrow I need to begin instituting some of the procedural things like what we write on the board (date, class, agenda) at the beginning of each class, and the ground rules for my 2 week unit so they are more clear. This was the most tedious part of the process, once the definitions are out of the way the rest will be much smoother. Tomorrow- political preference quiz!
Monday, March 31, 2008
Unit Starts Tomorrow!
The full media literacy unit in it's very new and adapted form begins tomorrow when the kids come back from spring break. Up first... An overview of the unit, explaining what media, and media literacy are, and taking a political preference quiz so students have some idea where they stand as we start this bigger unit on media and American politics.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Lesson 2: Fact V. Opinion
My objectives with this lesson was for students to be able to differentiate facts and opinions, neutral language and bias language, and to be able to recognize how a source may sometimes pass off an opinion as neutral or factual information. In addition I hoped that students could identify facts and opinions in the business plans they have been working on, and identify persuasive arguments to investors, and areas where they needed to add evidence.
Overall, the lesson went according to plan. I was surprised that I was able to get through everything that I had written into the plan and still had time left for the most part. In the first class I was able to get through the whole lesson and still have 10 minutes for them to work on how to make their business plans more effective using facts and opinions. In the second class we were also able to get to that point and since there were only two student, we were able to individually work on how to make their business plans more persuasive.
There are some things that I could have done, upon reflection. When the students were reading through the article out loud, it is important to correct their punctuation. Since many students might know the words but not the spelling, it is important to clarify how the word is pronounced. Also I could have emphasized more in the first class that although facts are verifiable, it is GOOD to have opinions, and you should express them often, but is important to be able to back them up. I emphasized that in the second class.
Overall, the worksheets and materials worked well, the editorial could have been shorter with less advanced vocabulary but we got through it, and the student participation was better than expected!
Overall, the lesson went according to plan. I was surprised that I was able to get through everything that I had written into the plan and still had time left for the most part. In the first class I was able to get through the whole lesson and still have 10 minutes for them to work on how to make their business plans more effective using facts and opinions. In the second class we were also able to get to that point and since there were only two student, we were able to individually work on how to make their business plans more persuasive.
There are some things that I could have done, upon reflection. When the students were reading through the article out loud, it is important to correct their punctuation. Since many students might know the words but not the spelling, it is important to clarify how the word is pronounced. Also I could have emphasized more in the first class that although facts are verifiable, it is GOOD to have opinions, and you should express them often, but is important to be able to back them up. I emphasized that in the second class.
Overall, the worksheets and materials worked well, the editorial could have been shorter with less advanced vocabulary but we got through it, and the student participation was better than expected!
Monday, March 17, 2008
Lesson 1: Advertising
My objective with this lesson was to have students understand how prevalent advertisements are, how they attempt to influence us, and what clues they might leave about our culture. Unfortunately, this lesson got off to a shaky start as I was a bit late coming into the classroom, but I think after a few minutes I had it together and was able to execute the lesson for the most part as I had intended. It was my impression before the lesson that it would be difficult for students to differentiate between many advertisements and content, and that was confirmed at the beginning of the lesson when I handed out the magazines. I had planned to use the first few minutes to define the terms but was unable to do that so I decided to define them as needed as we went along, which worked relatively well. After some one-on-one attention I was surprised at how quickly students began to be able to pick out the advertisements. They were able to identify logos and other indicators of advertising. I was also very pleased with how quickly they identified the lesson that they were supposed to take away from the exercise. They understood the subliminal effect advertising can have on them through my examples, were able to identify lessons that historians might take away from advertisements about our culture at this time and relate that to their autobiography projects, and also identify the importance of being able to distinguish between facts and opinions. Participation was very high for this class. I did not get to do the formal written assessment I had wanted to with their paragraphs, but I got more than I expected out of the discussion and was happy with the lesson overall.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
10 Day Unit on Media Literacy Introduction
Starting a couple days after the students come back from Spring Break (that will be April 2nd), I will be starting a 10 day unit on media literacy. This will be my full two weeks of teaching, and allow me to put to work the media literacy unit that I prepared in my social studies methods class last semester. Using this unit in my current school will be a challenge, since it is a much different groups of students than I had in mind while preparing the unit. Instead of block classes, I will see the students once a day for just 50 minutes. We are lucky to have more than 40-45 mins of time to really work. The class sizes are much smaller. The largest class has less than 10 people (depending on attendance). Technology that I planned to use is available, but since my classes are all in different rooms transporting, restarting the equipment, and getting the resources set up will require extra set up time. There are a few things that require dramatic changes to the content-
1. Vocab, Vocab, Vocab. - A lot of the vocabulary that I had intended to use will not be practical in classes where the majority of students first language is not English, and for some, their English vocabulary is still very little. So the first thing I realized is that I was going to have to do a significant amount of contextualizing the unit before we begin. I will have to review (hopefully in a somewhat interesting way) a lot of vocabulary that relates to politics and media. Defining the initial terms and concepts will take up a good part of the first two days of the unit. Even still, there will be a lot to establish as we proceed to make sure that the students can take full advantage of the activities. Since this is the beginning of a larger trimester of studies on politics, media, and government, spending a couple days on context will be worth it.
2. Technological Literacy- During the last trimester we did a unit with the students on autiobiographies as historical evidence. We were having them set up MySpace pages as their own autiobiographies. We did not anticipate however how long the project would take because most students did not have an email account, did not know how to set up an email account, did not know how to make a MySpace account, what upload and download meant, and other technological skills. Surely, there will be similar hurdles in this unit as we attempt to do extensive internet searching, using YouTube and more.
3. Time and Depth- Because of some of the unique challenges that I will be facing, each of the lessons that I have prepared will take longer than I had planned for. I have cut back on some of the lessons and for some of them I have only cut out some of the activities. The vast majority of the lessons in this media literacy unit concentrate on learning important skills that students can use in a future increasingly dependent on technological literacy. The students will be learning about politics and government throughout this unit, but only in the process of learning how to find information, sort through it, analyze it, contextualize it, and more. I have also taken into account the student population in adapting this lesson so that I use examples that relate to their lives.
I am aware that I will not be able to get through all of the material I have set out, even in this abbreviated version of the unit, so I have prioritized the schedule at the same time as ensuring that it was properly scaffolded based on what the students come in knowing.
In addition, I have already begun the unit in a way by doing two lessons that fit into the unit in advance of the full two weeks. I have done two lessons so far...one on advertising and one on fact vs. opinion. I will provide some brief reaction to those lessons in my next post!
1. Vocab, Vocab, Vocab. - A lot of the vocabulary that I had intended to use will not be practical in classes where the majority of students first language is not English, and for some, their English vocabulary is still very little. So the first thing I realized is that I was going to have to do a significant amount of contextualizing the unit before we begin. I will have to review (hopefully in a somewhat interesting way) a lot of vocabulary that relates to politics and media. Defining the initial terms and concepts will take up a good part of the first two days of the unit. Even still, there will be a lot to establish as we proceed to make sure that the students can take full advantage of the activities. Since this is the beginning of a larger trimester of studies on politics, media, and government, spending a couple days on context will be worth it.
2. Technological Literacy- During the last trimester we did a unit with the students on autiobiographies as historical evidence. We were having them set up MySpace pages as their own autiobiographies. We did not anticipate however how long the project would take because most students did not have an email account, did not know how to set up an email account, did not know how to make a MySpace account, what upload and download meant, and other technological skills. Surely, there will be similar hurdles in this unit as we attempt to do extensive internet searching, using YouTube and more.
3. Time and Depth- Because of some of the unique challenges that I will be facing, each of the lessons that I have prepared will take longer than I had planned for. I have cut back on some of the lessons and for some of them I have only cut out some of the activities. The vast majority of the lessons in this media literacy unit concentrate on learning important skills that students can use in a future increasingly dependent on technological literacy. The students will be learning about politics and government throughout this unit, but only in the process of learning how to find information, sort through it, analyze it, contextualize it, and more. I have also taken into account the student population in adapting this lesson so that I use examples that relate to their lives.
I am aware that I will not be able to get through all of the material I have set out, even in this abbreviated version of the unit, so I have prioritized the schedule at the same time as ensuring that it was properly scaffolded based on what the students come in knowing.
In addition, I have already begun the unit in a way by doing two lessons that fit into the unit in advance of the full two weeks. I have done two lessons so far...one on advertising and one on fact vs. opinion. I will provide some brief reaction to those lessons in my next post!
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
New school!
So I have FINALLY started my student teaching at a public charter school in the Columbia Heights/ Mt. Pleasant neighborhood in DC called Next Step (Proximo Paso). The school is comprised of 83 students, mostly very recent immigrants and high school drop-outs. One of the school's major goals is to prepare these students for the GED. The students in steps 1 to 3 are being taught content in Spanish at varying reading levels (elementary-step 1, middle school level- step 2, and at or near high school level- step 3). Those students also take ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages). Steps 4, 5, and 6 classes are taught in English at varying reading levels (some literally at 1st-3rd grade reading levels).
Of course I will primarily be teaching social studies but for the first week I am sampling all of the steps to get an idea of the schools program and get to know each of the teachers. Today I even taught a science class about global warming IN SPANISH! It was challenging but really awesome! I am also getting involved in helping an ESOL class of lower level Spanish speakers.
Tomorrow and then ALL DAY Friday I will be teaching the digestive system (in English, thank God!). I will be posting about all of my experiences as I go here on this blog. When I have an idea of lessons I will need to plan, I would love your ideas!
Scott
Of course I will primarily be teaching social studies but for the first week I am sampling all of the steps to get an idea of the schools program and get to know each of the teachers. Today I even taught a science class about global warming IN SPANISH! It was challenging but really awesome! I am also getting involved in helping an ESOL class of lower level Spanish speakers.
Tomorrow and then ALL DAY Friday I will be teaching the digestive system (in English, thank God!). I will be posting about all of my experiences as I go here on this blog. When I have an idea of lessons I will need to plan, I would love your ideas!
Scott
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