Throughout my practicum I tried many different things to get my students engaged with the material and subject in hand. In my practicum, I used a lot of technology from youtube videos to prezi presentations. When they did their Inquiry Project presentations, a lot of them chose to do a prezi presentation or a video that they made. I tried a variety of teaching methods from teacher questioning to think, pair, share. The three artifacts I chose reflect the two units I taught during my practicum, the Late Middle Ages and Poetry.
I taught two units in Social Studies 8, the Late Middle Ages and The Renaissance. The artifact that I chose for this standard is the unit plan I did for the Late Middle Ages. This was the first unit plan I designed. I received a lot of help and support from my Faculty Advisor and School Advisor and the unit turned out great. For the most part of the unit, I followed the textbook when planning the lessons but I did my own way of teaching when it came to the lessons. I tried to implement student led activities through grouping the students together and coming up with the answers themselves. As a teacher I try to tie in similarities to today’s culture and give the students a perspective that by learning about our history, it can help us shape our future. One of things I did at the very first lesson of the unit was show how the conflict and revolution in Egypt was similar to the reformation of the church during the time just before the Renaissance. I made the effort to tie in current events to the themes I wanted them to learn during our unit and to the most part, the students got the idea. The second artifact is a picture of myself teaching a lesson about women’s roles during the Late Middle Ages. We discussed how women were treated in the late middle ages and I related it to how women were treated in Afghanistan. I showed a picture of a woman who was brutally beaten by her husband’s family because she tried to run away from him. The picture in the prezi presentation is of the woman with her nose cut off. When I showed this picture of the woman, there were some shocks and disgusted faces because of the nature of the picture but it created a lot of discussion of the roles of women in our society and in the society of the Middle Ages.
The third and final artifact I chose is a lesson plan from my poetry unit. I chose this particular unit because its about Love and Poetry. The majority of songs are about love and my students listen to a lot of music about love. Some of them can relate and some of them cannot. One of the tasks they did was to write a love poem about a body part they hate. One person wrote a great poem about his skinniness and how even though he hates being skinny, he still loves the way he looks. Some of the girls in the class even suggested to me certain musical artists to bring in for next class because they relate to them better and I found it true. During this unit, the way I assessed and evaluated them was through a Poetry Portfolio which is a culmination of all their poetry that they wrote during the unit. I also had the students write reflections on songs that they chose because I wanted to see what kinds of songs they listen to as well as see if they understand they lyrics to the songs they are listening to.
Throughout the practicum, planning units and lessons were a lot of hard work but when going out there and teaching the lesson and having the students understand the learning outcomes is very rewarding. The instructional methods and evaluations are still things I need to work on but I believe that will come with time and practice.