Lesson 4 Reflection Whole Class The fourth lesson I taught was on the Native Americans, specifically on vocabulary terms

associated with the students study of them. To engage the students in the lesson I started by rapping a Native Americans song. The students really enjoyed this. From what I learned in my first lesson I decided to only encourage the students to recite the chorus with me, and not the whole song. This went well, and almost all of the students sang the chorus. My objective in this goal was to have students come up with motions for the vocabulary terms to help them remember the definition. I chose to do this upon guidance from an English professor. She held to the idea that by doing things with their body the definitions would be better remembered since they would be using more than one sense to learn. I agreed with her. She suggested that the students come up with the motions on their own so they feel a since of ownership over the motions. I paired students up and asked each pair to come up with motions to some of the terms. (The students had previously been given the terms). I gave the students the example of a canoe, and showed them how by rowing an imaginary oar with their hands, if someone did not know what a canoe was they could remember the definition by doing the motion. It was difficult for the students to come up with motions on their own though. I think the reason for this was because of the nature of the terms. Words like government, council, and constitution are hard to illustrate through motion. The lesson was meant to only take up about 30 minutes, so after getting one or two motions from students we moved onto the scavenger hunt. This was a difficult part of the lesson

as I decided to write a letter at the bottom of each card that was displayed with the term. My idea was to have students write this letter beside the definitions, and then match the letter to the corresponding number in a secret message on the back of their worksheet. The students were confused by this concept and thought they were only supposed to write the letter, like they have done before on tests when matching terms to their definitions. The lesson ended as it was time to go to lunch. I was discouraged because the students really had not taken anything away from the time spent on the vocabulary words. I was able to have some more time for the students to complete their scavenger hunt as it would act as their study guide. While they were completing this, several students came up to me confused about the difference between government, council, and constitution. I got all the students attention and explained to them how the government encompasses the council and the constitution. Through doing this, I accidently came up with motions to the words. I had all the students recite the definition while acting out the motion with me. This was very effective, and the students were very engaged and enjoyed it. As they continued to work on the scavenger hunt I would stop them periodically to show them new motions that I had come up with while helping other students. When teaching future lessons like this I will make sure I come up with motions before-hand to show the students. I do agree that the students should have ownership of the motions and will give them some time to come up with them, but I now see it is important to have that repertoire in case the students struggle. The pre and post assessment I used for this lesson were identical. They involved the students just writing the definitions of the vocabulary terms in their own words. It is not reasonable to assume pre and post assessments for all lessons can be identical in this sense.

However, it did give clear evidence of student learning and I will make sure to make the assessments as closely related as possible in the future. In this lesson, the evidence of student learning is shocking. The pre-assessment was almost empty for some students although they had been exposed to some of the terms prior to the lesson. As a class average, they only knew 39% of the terms. The post-assessment showed that they knew 79% of the terms on average. This was a great example of undisputable evidence of student learning. It also allowed me to check for miscues the students still had. Individuals 1. The reason the low performing student most likely was not successful in this lesson is because he had a hard time staying focused. During the scavenger hunt he would get distracted with things near the cards and start messing with them instead. He also does not enjoy writing and was probably not to excited to have to write out the definitions on the post-assessment. I could accommodate this in the future by giving him an oral test instead of using the pencil and paper method. 2. The average student for this class behaved typical of a majority of the class. He was fairly focused on the lesson but did struggle with coming up with motions to the words. On his post assessment he correctly defined all of the terms, word for word. It may have been possible that he really did remember all of the definitions that well but he most likely did not know he was not allowed to use his definitions on the work sheet since it was a morning work assignment. To correct this in the future I will make sure the directions are clear for all assessments and do my best to be present when the assessments are done.

3. The high performing student in this lesson increased the percentage of correct responses from 76 to 100%. She enjoyed doing motions for the vocabulary terms and was engaged throughout the lesson. I think she was also successful just because of the student she is. She receives good grades frequently and she most likely studied her terms at home.