I loved this lesson! The way that you used the hands on activities was awesome and really got us to use higher level thinking to predict what we thought our object was and how it may have been used. I bet you would get some really interesting answers from a group that is actually in the developmental group you were targeting. One question I have is what are some ways you could teach slavery from using a social justice curriculum and get students to see slavery from the perspectives of other cultures?
I thought this was a great activity! It was a great activity. Most of us (sorry Sophie and Alex) got to feel what it was like to teach on our own, we had to work out appropriate pacing, we could be flexible and add a personal touch to each of our lessons, we had some freedom in picking out our standards and designing a suitable lesson, and so on. This activity was immensely beneficial, and I think we all learned a great deal about our teaching strategies and the teaching strategies of our peers. When looking at our lessons specifically I really enjoyed both of these activities. One activity allowed students some hands-on materials and asked them to put themselves in another persons shoes (which I think is one of the best things one can do when teaching history, it personalizes the content), and the other lesson allowed students to tie their personal lives into class and share with their peers (kids at the lower levels of elementary school love sharing things about themselves or their family). These were great lessons in that we played off student’s interests developmentally. We allowed for comparisons, interpretation, worked on historical thinking & questioning skills, taught empathy, connected the content to their lives, etc. These lessons were successful and I had a great time teaching them.
Our group decided to build off of a lesson from the Colonial Williamsburg collection for our upper level history lesson. In this lesson, the students worked with primary sources/artifacts of the colonial era such as a pair of socks, a spoon, feather pen, etc. In our lesson we asked students to look critically at the primary sources; inquiring as to what the uses of the artifacts were, who used them, what they can tell us about their time, etc. In this particular activity we used the colonial slave pack to focus our scope. We gave the students some background for the colonial slave unit. Students were asked to complete a worksheet that would familiarize them with the artifact as well as make them think more deeply about the impact that this artifact has on historical thinking. Finally, we asked students to journal about what life would be like as a colonial slave, asking them to think/write empathetically and put themselves in the shoes of an african american slave in this time period.
I loved this lesson! The way that you used the hands on activities was awesome and really got us to use higher level thinking to predict what we thought our object was and how it may have been used. I bet you would get some really interesting answers from a group that is actually in the developmental group you were targeting. One question I have is what are some ways you could teach slavery from using a social justice curriculum and get students to see slavery from the perspectives of other cultures?
Zach’s Thoughts:
I thought this was a great activity! It was a great activity. Most of us (sorry Sophie and Alex) got to feel what it was like to teach on our own, we had to work out appropriate pacing, we could be flexible and add a personal touch to each of our lessons, we had some freedom in picking out our standards and designing a suitable lesson, and so on. This activity was immensely beneficial, and I think we all learned a great deal about our teaching strategies and the teaching strategies of our peers. When looking at our lessons specifically I really enjoyed both of these activities. One activity allowed students some hands-on materials and asked them to put themselves in another persons shoes (which I think is one of the best things one can do when teaching history, it personalizes the content), and the other lesson allowed students to tie their personal lives into class and share with their peers (kids at the lower levels of elementary school love sharing things about themselves or their family). These were great lessons in that we played off student’s interests developmentally. We allowed for comparisons, interpretation, worked on historical thinking & questioning skills, taught empathy, connected the content to their lives, etc. These lessons were successful and I had a great time teaching them.