Reflection Prior to Teaching the Industrial Revolution Unit
The unit plan I have developed on the Industrial Revolution is engaging and students should enjoy creating the final projects. The expectations for each project are clear and students will be able to follow the instruction carefully to create an exceptional final project. I have put a lot of time and a lot of thought into the stations activities and the project guidelines. Students will have seen examples of the projects prior to beginning so they should have a clear idea of what they need to accomplish. Also, students will have access to textbooks, additional books/resources, and the net-books to look up information to help with the projects. Although I have tried to plan everything out, I do have a few concerns about teaching my unit plan.
I don’t think that all students will be able to create the projects in two days. I am hoping that it will not take more than 3 days. However, I am a bit worried about if a few students complete the project in the two-day requirement, but the majority has not, what to do with students that finish early. I will probably review their project and push them to move further.
A second concern I have is the quality of the final projects. So far this year the students have proven time and time again that they will do work just to get it done, no matter the quality of what they produce. I am hoping that the projects will be so engaging that they want to do well and push themselves. However, I have thought that assignments given in the past were engaging and students still did not put forth much effort.
A third concern I have is maintaining control of the groups, especially in the larger classes with 25-30 students. Students have been in groups the past few days and will remain in groups until the project begins. Therefore, they will be used to working in groups and hopefully I will develop tactics to keep them focused on the task at hand. Furthermore, this will be the first big assignment students will have using the net-books. I am hoping that they will use the net-books for research and not for other things. I have decided that groups that are off task, or not using the net-books properly, they will have the privilege taken away from the group. I am hoping that is enough to keep them focused. I am also hoping I don’t have to take net-books away, especially if only one or two of the students are causing the problem.
Reflection After Teaching the Industrial Revolution Unit
The unit plan I developed on the Industrial Revolution went well overall. The majority of students completed the stations activities and based on the group activity sheets they learned what I was anticipating they would. The majority of the final projects were done well, with a few exceptions. At the completion of this unit, I believe that students learned a great deal of information about the time period. However, the initial timeline of the unit was too short, and the unit ended up taking a few extra days. In doing this project again, I would extend the time frame even more.
The introduction video was very captivating for students. I had originally planned on showing less than 15 minutes of the video, but ended up showing a little over 20 minutes. The students were so intrigued that I had to pause the movie a few times so they could ask questions. The excitement in the room just from the video started the unit off to a great start. However, it did add an extra day to the introduction period. Since students were engaging so well with the video, I didn’t mind lengthening the time it was shown. A few students from different classes even left the classroom exclaiming statements like, “that movie was awesome” and “I can’t believe people lived like that.”
The stations activities went well. I anticipated it would take the students a lot longer to get through each activity than it actually did. Most of the activities were completed within 12 minutes instead of 17, which made it easier for me to keep the stations activities to just two days. Having a stop-watch counting down how many minutes they had left to complete the station kept the groups very focused on the task. There was very little opportunity for the groups to become sidetracked. Following the stations portion of the unit, I did revise some of the group activity sheets to focus students on more elements of the articles and images than I had before. The stations quiz provided me with feedback that the students did understand the information I was hoping they would from each station.
Unfortunately, at this point in the unit the students had an interval exam scheduled. My cooperating teacher requested that Tuesday and Wednesday of that week were spent on review for the interval which was given Thursday. Friday, many students had to finish the exam so I developed a web-quest on the Industrial Revolution to get students acquainted with the netbooks. I think the breakup of the unit negatively impacted the start up and quality of the final projects since students could only remember the larger ideas and lost some of the smaller details they had learned from the stations.
The explanation of the project was successful in that students seemed eager to get started and were excited about which project option their group chose. Some classes got a little too excited, and it was tough to keep them focused on the other project options once they thought they had chosen what they wanted to do. However, when I provided each group with their specific project descriptions, checklist, and rubric a few of the groups became overwhelmed. I had listed pre-selected websites for the students to use to look up information, but some students had a difficult time determining what their projects would be focused on. It took a lot of one-on-one instruction for some groups the first day. By the second day, the students had a much better idea of what they should be researching and how to start the project. That night I took each group folder home and reviewed their progress. I wrote individual notes to all groups explaining the strengths and weaknesses of their drafts and provided some groups with suggestions on where to go with the project. The third day was very successful, but none of the groups were finished. I allowed a fourth day to wrap up the projects and that seemed to be enough for almost all the groups to finish.
Many of the group projects were well thought out. One thing I did notice after grading the projects was many groups focused on one component of the project and did not put much effort into other components. For example, with the option for the labor union poster and speech, many groups focused primarily on the poster and didn’t compose a good speech or vice versa. I believe this was due to a lack of time and group members becoming distracted. I also think it was because many groups didn’t assign appropriate roles to group members. The next time I present this project I will spend much more time in class explaining how to break the projects down so that each member contributes equally to the final project.
The creativity of many students really shined from this project. I was surprised at the hard work many students put in, even the students who typically did not participate in other class activities throughout the year. I was pleasantly surprised by one group in particular. The integrated classes are primarily composed of students with IEP’s and other behavioral and motivational problems. A group of 4 students had gotten off to a really rocky start, and one group member in particular was a very low in ability. However, this group really blew me away with their song/rap and their diary entry in the end. They composed a song with a chorus and two rap verses. It showed how well they knew the content and their ability to compose a thoughtful piece. The diary was a little short, but still showed strong content knowledge. One student even sang the chorus for the presentation while another rapped, and I was able to record it!
Overall this unit was successful and I was impressed with the student’s abilities to come up with creative pieces. In the future, I would take more time to ensure that groups are delegating tasks appropriately so that all group members were contributing equally. I would also set up more checkpoints throughout the project to make sure the groups are using their time wisely to complete all components of the project. I also think I would extend the amount of time students had to work the project in their groups by an additional two days, so six working days in total. This would allow two days for research and note taking only, two days brainstorm and to compose a first draft, and two days to wrap up the project on the poster board.