There were some things that I liked and disliked about my unit. I felt like my performance tasks really immersed students within the content. I firmly believe that writing about history in creative ways helps students retain knowledge of content taught. On the tests, students performed well on the questions that correlated with the content from the persuasive letter and opinion piece. One change I feel like I should've made involves the Union County Conquest activity. I feel like it would've been more effective if I used the activity to introduce students to the concept of imperialism. Many students struggled with the concept at first.
The unit plan initially called for the students to take notes on some lessons. However, some students struggled to keep up with the notes at an adequate pace. To increase instructional time, I created note-taking guides for students to fill in instead. As a result, students spent more time on the content being taught, and the overall instructional time increased.
One problem I struggled with was classroom discussion. Whether the students were timid or I wasn't presenting the content in the most interesting way, I felt disappointed with the amount of student participation in discussion at times. I need to find better ways to engage students in discussion. Perhaps I should create more lessons that solely focus on discussion.
Another issue involves the test questions. I believe that there were some vague answer choices in the questions that possibly confused students. There were a few times students had to ask about the meanings of certain answer choices. I noted some instances in which a student could could answer a particular question correctly if the answer choices were written more clearly.
One last issue involves the actual teaching. While speaking, I need to break down the content to a level that all students can understand. There were some instances during enrichment activities in which I had to review the new content with some students.
I learned that students retained more information from the writing activities than enrichment activities. I still believe that enrichment is important, but it is important to put students in situations where they have to really think about history. Overall, I believe that the students learned vital information about imperialism. At the same time, however, I believe that I learned more from my students.
The unit plan initially called for the students to take notes on some lessons. However, some students struggled to keep up with the notes at an adequate pace. To increase instructional time, I created note-taking guides for students to fill in instead. As a result, students spent more time on the content being taught, and the overall instructional time increased.
One problem I struggled with was classroom discussion. Whether the students were timid or I wasn't presenting the content in the most interesting way, I felt disappointed with the amount of student participation in discussion at times. I need to find better ways to engage students in discussion. Perhaps I should create more lessons that solely focus on discussion.
Another issue involves the test questions. I believe that there were some vague answer choices in the questions that possibly confused students. There were a few times students had to ask about the meanings of certain answer choices. I noted some instances in which a student could could answer a particular question correctly if the answer choices were written more clearly.
One last issue involves the actual teaching. While speaking, I need to break down the content to a level that all students can understand. There were some instances during enrichment activities in which I had to review the new content with some students.
I learned that students retained more information from the writing activities than enrichment activities. I still believe that enrichment is important, but it is important to put students in situations where they have to really think about history. Overall, I believe that the students learned vital information about imperialism. At the same time, however, I believe that I learned more from my students.