I originally was introduced to moot court exercises in college. After finding these to be particularly fun and educational, I adjusted the moot court prep to make it age-appropriate for middle school students. This assignment became accessible for the middle school level without removing the content, moral contemplations, or the structure in which the moot court took place. At the end of the lesson, the students were asked to complete an exit slip, which included a self-evaluation of their role and what they learned about during the Bill of Rights and Supreme Court exercises of this simulation. 

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In order to make this lesson appropriate for all individuals, I conducted a diagnostic assessment to gauge where the students were in their current understanding of the Bill of Rights. The diagnostic assessment included the following components: 

      

   - Students indicated which wordings were confusing or unfamiliar

   - Students to give their own definitions or understandings of what the amendments meant or what specific word choices entailed

    - They filled out a KWL (know, want to know, learned) chart at the end of the class. At the end of each subsequent class, I left time for them to add what they learned and to add what they wanted to learn moving forward. 

 

The first part of the diagnostic assessment was to gain an understanding of what these specific middle schoolers (a group I was unfamiliar with) knew already. The second part (the KWL), was then used to decide which amendments we would focus on moving forward (the second amendment and the fourth were the topics of interest). By allowing my lesson plan to be flexible (taking into account student interest), I encouraged students to advance their knowledge regarding a topic that they found personally interesting.

 

In addition to allowing each student's interest to drive the direction of the lesson, I also allowed the students to rank their top choices of the roles they wanted to play during the moot court. Their options were the judge, the respondent, and the appellant. I emphasized how the judges have to remain unbiased and look at only the facts presented by the speakers on both sides. The students who ranked the judge as their top choice felt that they could be unbiased. The rest of the class was split up between the respondent and the appellant with one person designated as the speaker for their group. I had the students rank their choices so that my host teacher and I could personally select the roles based on the host teacher's view of the student's development and what she felt was appropriate for each student. 

 

What I Learned: 

At the beginning of this lesson plan, I was going full force with student voice, choice, and autonomy. I had just read about this in my Curriculum Design and Assessment class and thought it was the best idea in the world! Giving students control over their own learning seemed to make sense, and it does! However, I brought it a bit too far. When trying to choose which amendment we would focus on as well as choosing the roles (despite my attempt to make the class directly related to what they wanted to do), I still got push back. The students seemed to change their interests overnight, and I got overwhelmed with complaints about the choices I made. This was frustrating, but my host teacher was able to help me manage and take back control. One thing I really would like to learn more about is trying to balance leading the class from the head of the classroom (making all choices), and leading from within (letting students make most of the choices). 

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Indicator 1(b): Creates developmentally appropriate instruction that takes into account individual learners’ strengths, interests, and needs and that enables each learner to advance and accelerate his/her learning. ​

Indicator 1(g): Understands the role of language and culture in learning and knows how to modify instruction to make language comprehensible and instruction relevant, accessible, and challenging.  

Indicator 1(j):  Takes responsibility for promoting learners’ growth and development.

In this lesson, I have sorted students into groups for focused instruction based on skill levels with materials specifically designed for each group. The student's skills were assessed by collecting their notes for two different chapters. These were roughly divided into those with strong skills, those with gaps in their skills, and those who haven’t yet started addressing note-taking as necessary to their learning progress. Each of these groups were given a specific template. These templates scaffold placeholders for the essential question, additional questions, details, and a summary section.After this lesson, students will have the choice of which template they use for any note-taking session.

 

Throughout this Machiavelli: The Prince unit, I adjusted my lesson plans based on student feedback. One example of. this is once we got to chapter 8, I took feedback on the difficulty of the translation we were using. The result of this was that we found a more modern-English version with special agreements with specific students who wanted to use the more accurate but harder translation.

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Finally, I have incorporated individual meetings in two classes. From these meetings, I was able to address behavior and academic struggles one-on-one. One result of these meetings is that I learned that certain students need more concrete examples (a benefit to many of their peers!) and another student suggested more vocabulary work. This additional word support benefits others as well. 

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What I Learned:

Through this lesson, I realized the value and importance of skills-based instruction and student feedback.

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As for student feedback, listening to the students and making adjustments to the material allows them to see that their voice makes a real difference in the classroom. This gives them authority over their learning and over their learning environment. These meetings also allowed me to work through relationship building with all of my students. 

As for skills-based instruction, to see students' skills increase is so great. To hear them tell you how much they appreciate the skills that you have taught them and the resource wall that you provide, fills my heart with joy. To see my students, in action, using these skills at a higher level of mastery than their peers fills me with pride. 

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Skills-based instruction is truly at the core of my teaching methodology. I do my best to not expect students to hone skills that I have not attempted to teach them. In addition to that, there are life skills every student needs to learn. Teaching these life skills is also engaging and meaningful to the students who do not plan on going to college. 

My goal is to be able to do individual meetings with all of my classes. It would be ideal to have this as a routine built into Mondays, Wednesdays, or on Fridays every week or every other week. These individual meetings served as a great asset in individualizing and adjusting the lesson plans to meet my student's needs. Through these meetings, I also learned a lot about each student's personal life, likes/dislikes, and learning styles. 

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Another goal is to continue to build my toolbelt of academic and life skills that I can incorporate into my lesson plans. So far, this is what I have: 

    Academic Skills

- Notetaking 

- Presentation creation

- How to write an introduction with a hook. 

- How to write a conclusion

- How to write a five-paragraph essay

- What a dedication page is and how to write one.

- How to use Chicago style citations, including footnotes. 

- Flashcards and other memorization techniques.

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    Life Skills

- Group behavior and discussion

- Civil Discourse

- What consensus is. 

- How to make and practice for a presentation.  

- Growth mindset.

- How to give constructive feedback. 

- Goal setting

- Introspection

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This seems like a long list, but every day in my student teaching I came across another skill that we expect our students to have but yet have never taken the time to teach them. For Christmas, I parted my seniors with a gift of a packet of a few of the skills I wish I had had the time to teach them such as visual note-taking and time management. Teaching my students academic and non-academic skills will forever be a goal of mine as an educator; I find it is at the root of all learning.