Overall I think the lesson went pretty well. Mike and I had a large amount of preparation before this lesson was taught. Because we were doing History Bingo we needed a large amount of materials like beans, bingo boards, prizes, podcast, video, a power point presentation, typed up note handouts. We also discussed ways to seat the class to keep them all within eyes view. Preparation was well planned except for switching beans as markers into papers or chips, and that we could switch our candy prize to pencils, erasers, and gadgets. The objective was to have the students understand and identify four facts about the civil war. This was going to be assessed when a student received bingo. Once they receive bingo they have to tell us the four key concepts that lie on their boards. If they didn't remember one of them they could have ask a friend in class for help which shows that others got the concepts. The key to this lesson was time which I thought we were going to have more of, that way more students would have received bingo.
Our plan wasn't executed exactly as written because we felt like because this was a mock classroom if we played the podcast we might start loosing control over the class before we started the actual bingo part. So we were worried about keeping control in order to achieve the main goal. This is justified because when others used their podcasts I immediately stopped listening. Ours wasn't to long it was part of the Gettysburg Address, but we decided to show a video instead.
I would say the most important thing I tried to teach the students is that the Civil War was a war that changed the standards of warfare for futures to come. This was because of the use of iron clad ships, photography, weapons and attack styles.
I think the lesson went well, the students didn't get out of hand, they answered questions based on the war during the plan, we were able to have people participate in drawing beans and later collecting them. It was a fun lesson with prizes. When I taught something like this for another class the whole class was very interested and enthusiastic. I think because of the behavior cards and the idea of sitting in class was to find a way to disrupt the lesson there wasn't as much enthusiasm. I believe students would much rather play bingo in review for a test then here us lecture for 50 minutes. I'm not satisfied with the grade we received because of how much hard work we put in to making this lesson plan. Also everything was original and creative instead of taking a lesson off the internet. Maybe it needed some more improvement but it shouldn't have been reduced.
I learned from the students that some will try to spoil your lesson plan but you have to keep on persisting so that others can learn too. Don't let a few bad seeds spoil the lesson. If handled right at the moment someone acts out it can be stopped, an example is breaking up groups of friends.
What would I have done differently to make it effective and improve. I would have changed the beans like stated earlier in order to keep the students from eating them or throwing them. It would have taken too much time on top of our preparation but a way to use our podcast without boring the students would have been to record the key facts. This way on our power point we could have shown a picture and played the podcast of information. That would have taken away the nervousness and hit every detailed description of the terms. Also I think we could have had some written type of assessment like ask the class to write down four facts they learned. Although the point of bingo was to review for next test which would have further asses the plan.
The podcast was going to be played on the Gettysburg address. It was going to be played in the begging of class after the video clip we showed. The original idea was to have the students break down the speech but we went for something more interesting. With the podcast we had we were going to talk a little about it afterwards because it included several key concepts such as Abraham Lincoln, the battle of Gettysburg, importance of the speech itself. We made the choice not to use it because with the way the class acted during the previous group teaching we didn't want them to react negatively. Odds were that if we did play it we would have used up too much time and not gotten to bingo. This decision was also based on the fact that our lesson was cut in half while before we would have had more time to play it. So being notified of I was more in favor of leaving it out. Like I said earlier if we didn't have so much preparation we could have used the podcasting to explain the key terms during the power point as the terms were drawn.
For future lessons I would just like to use the podcast in a way that wouldn't bore the students with just my voice but influence them to make their own. Possibly even have them make their own for a review for the test as a study method.
I believe some of the lesson plans were very interesting and creative. Some I didn't really get to interested in because of the way everyone acted. It was to easy to get carried away with misbehaving. While I was in school I wasn't really the class clown I behaved more. In one lesson plan they have people dress up in shapes which I found as an amazing idea. For their grade level the students would have loved it. Some of the other lesson plans influenced ours because I didn't find the podcasts to be all that interesting. One group managed to include a video and fun activity with it which I felt was the most effective one. Again I was caught up in misbehaving but I still give them credit. Other groups were able to pinpoint my behaviors right away such as looking out the window, texting, and talking. In school if I got in trouble right away I would behave more to prove to the teacher I don't deserve to be yelled at.
I think it is important to ask the students questions and be able to answer all of them. During a lesson if I had a question and if my classmates teaching knew the answer it would impress me and keep me interested. I would have handed out index cards at the end of the lesson like some did which would have made the difference in our grade. The plans were all very well and there are plenty of talented up and coming teachers.
