Lesson Plan Analysis

Creating a Lesson Plan When creating lesson plans, the process can take on many different forms. Whether it is recreating a lesson I learned in my education courses at UGA, finding one from a different teacher on the internet and adapting it, or creating one from scratch, my main focus in lesson plan creation depends on what I want as an end result. Depending on the scope of knowledge used in this result, I may desire my students to be able to think critically about a topic and make strong points that require multiple perspectives and a deep understanding. This type of result is something I expect my students to be able to achieve at the end of a unit. Similarly, I might desire my students to know simple vocabulary at the end of the first day of a new unit. These results are usually decided by the assigned standards, but they can also focus on much loftier educational goals. No matter what the scope of knowledge is, knowing the desired result is the most important aspect when it comes to creating lesson plans and this is usually where I begin. Once the result is determined, I then try to plan lessons that present information in an interesting way that relates to lives of the students and accesses their strengths in the classroom. By using projects, concept lessons, graphic organizers, debates, inquiry lessons, and many other methods, any topic can be made appealing to students if the correct combination is found. In my short time planning lessons, I have found that the more exciting and creative methods have a much greater affect on my students even if they take more time to create. Sitting in a classroom for hours on end can easily become a very boring process and I would never want my students to associate education with boring. It will not always happen, but by trying to keep lesson plans fun and challenging, I believe students will come to love what happens in the classroom.

Lesson Background As for the lesson that I chose to analyze for this aspect of my portfolio, this lesson is one that I gave my 12th grade Economics students At Cedar Shoals High School and was designed as a way to express a collection of concepts and ideas that the students had been working on through the previous unit on monetary and fiscal policy. In this lesson, the students were given four newspaper articles that discussed the fiscal policies of Athens, GA over the past two years, focusing mainly on the public school budget and Caterpillar plant in their community. These articles spoke of school budget cuts, tax incentives, increased employment, and increased tax base in our community. The students were responsible for reading a single article, filling out a data collection chart on that article, and then discussing what was happening in the article as a class before the student could repeat the process for all four articles. After the students spent a majority of the class researching this economic situation, they were asked to answer a series of short answer questions as well as two longer response questions that were aimed at promoting critical analysis and the creation of a connection between the information they had learned in the unit with their own community. Lesson Plan The following is a copy of the lesson plan template that I used in the creation of this lesson. Through the Social Studies Education program at UGA, I have learned that the best way to properly perform a lesson plan is to create a script to follow throughout the lesson. This technique helps keep a lesson on track and allows it to achieve its full potential.

DAILY LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE

(Adapted from resources developed at Oakland University)

Name: __________________Vince Sapp_______________________ Unit Topic Big idea(s) Essential Question(s) Standard(s(/ Benchmark(s)

Fiscal and Monetary Policy Understanding Fiscal and Monetary policies at the local level. Understanding how these policies trickle throughout the community. How does Monetary Policy and Fiscal Policy affect Athens, GA? SSEMA3 The student will explain how the government uses fiscal policy to promote price stability, full employment, and economic growth. SSEMA2 c. Describe how the Federal Reserve uses the tools of monetary policy to promote price stability, Full employment and economic growth.
Lesson Plan

Starter/Opening Review the previous days lesson on the Jobs break down for Athens GA Review vocabulary for the unit and make connections between employment and the Tax base in a community Ask the students what they know about the new Caterpillar plant in their community Build off their knowledge and make simple connections so that all of the students are starting on the same page Learning Activities & Assessments/Work Session 1) Hand out worksheet that is involved with this assignment. EXPLAIN that each student is responsible for filling out the data retrieval chart after reading each article. EXPLAIN that the short answer questions will be answered after all of the articles have been read. 2) Hand out the first article and have the students silently read the information. 3) The students will complete the information chart and we will quickly discuss the article and some of the surprises as a class before moving on. This will continue for all four articles. Article 1 is about school budget cuts for the Clarke County School District for the 2012 school year. Article 2 discusses the tax cuts given to the Caterpillar Plant to lure them to Athens during the same time. Article 3 Info sheet from Clarke County that describes the projected economic impact of this new plant Article 4 Newspaper article describing the return of furlough days in CCSD and the discovery of unexpected tax dollars 4) Discuss all four articles as a class and help the students understand the order of events. Through this discussion, students should use vocabulary learned in this unit to describe the process. EX: Tax base, government spending, fiscal policy, employment, money supply, etc 5) Students will complete the remainder of the worksheet by responding to the short essay questions in complete sentences. This will last the rest of the class and students work will be graded.

Assessment and Analysis Though there was a complete worksheet that went along with this lesson on fiscal and monetary policy in the local community, the questions on the front of the worksheet were used to help the student organize this new information so that they could complete the much more important long answer questions on the back. The purpose of these two questions was to help the students think more critically about what they had read and how it affected their community. My ultimate desire was for the students to make the connection between the new information and the information they had learned in the unit. The first question asked the students to play economist and describe the economic process that was expressed in the articles over the past two years in Athens, GA, while the second asked the students to predict the future impact of the Caterpillar Plant on Athens, GA and its economy. Both question allowed student to show what they have learned from this unit and the answers varied between very good and incomplete. Before I could analyze the work of my students, I first had to determine what qualified as a good answer and what qualified as an incomplete answer. For these two questions I am analyzing a good answer as one that shows simple things like complete sentence usage, full expression of a thought, and correct grammar, but also more difficult things like the application of economic terms, critical thinking, and an explanation of the economic process. This being an assignment for the end of a unit, the students should be comfortable using their new vocabulary in the correct way and be able to show how the money supply created by fiscal and monetary policy trickles through the entire economy. Students know much more than multiple choice questions allow them to show, and I think that through these questions I asked, the students could show the connections they had made throughout the unit while realizing that this information is

applicable to their own lives. On the other side, an incomplete answer was work that lacked effort, showed a poor understanding of vocabulary, and demonstrated a lack of ability to connect learned information with real world application. I am at a stage in my career as a future teacher where I have a difficult time judging between good and bad work because of my lack of confidence in my instruction. This being said, determining what I wanted from my students made the assessment process much easier that I used for all of my students, including the following three student assessment analysis examples. The first student I chose to assess for this assignment is an African American male in my advanced level economics class. This student is one of my smarter students who should have taken the AP Economics course, but constantly finds himself bored with the work of the advanced level economics. When analyzing his answers to both of the long answer questions, Student One performed at a high level and showed strong writing abilities through his answers. This student was able to correctly summarize the timeline of these articles and show the connections in this economic event. The tone of his writing showed that he understands the difficulties involved in deciding fiscal policies and how these decisions play out over time. Comparing this student to other students, Student One performed well at keeping the information in the articles in correct order and using it to defend his responses to the questions. When looking at the information provided by Student Ones answers, I was surprised to see the level to which this student has grasped the information. This student rarely takes notes in my class and is more occupied with the social aspects of being a high school senior, but for him to correctly use the vocabulary and show how a healthy economy is achieved, I am very satisfied with his answers. Student One achieved the goals I set for this assignment and, though his sentence structures

could be more complex, he was able to show his understanding of these articles and their relation to the unit. Student Two is an African American female in an advanced level economics class at Cedar Shoals High School. This student is one of my best students because of her ability to participate in class, take good notes, and encourage other students to participate in classroom activities. When it comes to assessing her answers to the two long answer questions of this assignment, I would say that this student also did very well with the activity, but there were some things left incomplete by this student. Student Two also wrote very well and used sentences that were more complex in this activity compared to most other students. Her summarizing skills showed a strong understanding of the articles and her ability to connect the public school budget in Athens with the new Caterpillar plant. This student did exceptionally well at explaining how the increase in money supply created by these fiscal policies will trickle throughout the community and improve the economy of Athens. One area where this student lacked was her ability to correctly collect information from the articles. The students were given a chart to fill out while they read each article that would help them complete the writing portion of this assignment. When analyzing the work of this student, it seems that she did not look as closely as she should have at the data because she used the wrong numbers in several occasions during her writing. Her ideas and thought process about this economic situation showed that she has a strong grasp of the affects increased taxing in a community and it was only her incorrect use of the data that held this students achievement from reaching its highest. Finally, Student Three is a Hispanic female in an advanced level economics class held at Cedar Shoals High School. This student is much more difficult to categorize within the classroom because of her varying attitude and participation in the class. This student has

numerous occasions where she participates well and really pushes the classroom conversation in some lessons, but she can also be a large distraction to the rest of the class and voice a very apathetic attitude towards the class and school in general. In addition, this student seems to struggle with the English language more than the students who I have previously analyzed and it was very interesting and challenging to assess this students work. Her sentences in her writing were not as well developed and her thoughts were not always complete, but Student Three did display an understanding and summary of the articles that was on par with that of her fellow classmates. Like her fellow classmates, Student Three showed an understanding of how money in our economy circulates through businesses, households, and the government through taxing, while being able to collect adequate information from her research of the articles. I know this because of her referring to the idea that the tax base will grow because of the Caterpillar plant. Again, the most interesting aspect of this students writing was the obvious disconnect that occurred with the English language compared to her fellow classmates. I have full confidence that this student understands the information asked for through this assignment and can make the desired connections. I find it unfair to give her a lower grade because of her writing that is possibly perpetuated by her home life in a Spanish-speaking household. When is comes to analyzing an assessment and how students perform on it I am still very green. I want to make excuses for all of my students as to why they might not perform on the same level as their peers or stretch their answers somewhat so that I can give them the benefit of the doubt. I do believe though that the ideas desired through an assignment are the main purpose of assessments and students should not lose the chance at success because they cannot play student as well as their peers.