As part of my Supporting Students with Disabilities class, I created this lesson plan to take into consideration students with various disabilities. It lasts one lass period and allows for students to explore the four generations that are currently in the workforce through multiple mediums such as music and historical events.  Students were grouped based on their responses to a multiple intelligences survey. Each group shares a similar learning style and then is assigned a station based on how they identify to best demonstrate their knowledge. In each of the stations and for the final product, students will have options as to how they choose to use their skills to apply the information. I used the different stations based on their multiple intelligences test to allow the students to use their already attained skills to access, interpret, evaluate and then apply information about a time era into a product. The options for the stations' products were: 

Station 1 ‑ An artistic medium showing the interconnectedness and representation along with major events of one generation. Station 2 ‑ An original or non‑original auditory representation of another generation. Station 3 ‑ An understanding of the historical events and the effect/evolution of media over time.

 

The options for the final products were: 

1. Write an essay to a prompt/question. 2. Give an oral presentation. This may include a slideshow but the student should be the source of information. 3. Do a service project. Talk with the teacher about what they want to do. 4. Write a research paper about a topic related to the time period that interests them. 5. Create an artistic representation of either a generation, an event, or another idea if the student proposes one.

 

 

What I learned:

In this lesson plan, I played to students' strengths and the skills that they already own in order to analyze the information. However, I wanted to do more than this and teach them the new skill of using primary and secondary sources. I soon learned that it can be hard to include primary and secondary sources in the classroom sometimes. I want to include many primary sources in my classroom by looking at newspapers and possibly doing some archival work where students could be discovering new bits of local history. In this lesson plan, I included looking at how events affect different generations. By the end of this lesson, I learned that I struggle with including and teaching the importance and differences between primary and secondary sources. This is something I hope to work on with my student teaching mentor. 

The conclusion of my time student teaching at Penquis Valley included a department-wide activity called the History Fair. The History Fair was intended to be similar to a Science Fair that schools have done in the past. 

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Students were given the ability to choose a topic and propose a thesis statement based on that topic. Their topics had to be at least 30 years in the past. The range of topics students suggested or ended up doing varied from the Black Plague to Ancient Egyptian Agriculture. 

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Students had in-class time every class period for two professors to help them. This was true for both social studies classes. The students started gathering information and then worked on writing a 4 page paper about their topic (argumentative style). Lastly, students would then create a Trifold presentation for the history fair. Their poster also had to reflect some of the concepts from Thinking Like A Historian (which we had been talking about all year). 

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This was a massive project and it caused many positive and negative emotions for the students and the teachers, as any big project does. This was also the first time the school had attempted this fair so it was new to everyone involved. The entire school ended up getting behind the project. Some teachers in other content areas such as math and English had set time aside from their lessons to allow students to work on the assignment. 

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We also ended up working closely with our special education department to ensure that all of the students were receiving the assistance they required, were being assessed based on their ability, and that the assignment was tangible for students especially those with organization struggles. In order to best serve all students, we created a separate rubric for those working with the Resource Room (which is what we call the room where students with IEPs or 504s can receive extra assistance). I also put together several packets to provide students resources, templates, and guides that would help them through their research, writing, and presenting. I found it hard to provide the same level of support for every student but made a special effort to check-in on those that I identified as struggling with the project, or who were receiving extra help. This standard was a hard one to meet all the time because every student needs so many different things, but it is the most important standard to consistently be working on. 

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What I learned:

I learned that every new initiative will be messy at first,  but that's okay! Messy can be fun as long as everyone has the resources to have fun. Throughout the process of this initiative, we created a document with all of the things the department will do differently next year. We discovered that more scaffolding and more time is needed to ensure that all the students are on board and not being left behind. The dates and deadlines got overwhelming for the students and the in-class time we gave them didn't seem to be enough for them. 

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All in all, I absolutely loved this project and hope to be able to be a part of it next year as well. The projects the students came up with were fascinating, the conversations I heard students having outside of the classroom were content-based, and lastly, connections were made all across the building. 

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I believe that next year, each part of the resource packets the students were provided should be a lesson on its own. This will help the students scaffold the skills that they need in order to do this project successfully. 

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My goal as a teacher next year is to ensure that I am teaching my students new but useful skills. Every student has a skill that they need help working on and I want to be that teacher! 

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Wherever I end up next year as a full-time teacher, I want to make it a point to have a good relationship with the special education department and other content areas. When I first started student teaching my mentor emphasized the importance of having the special education department as a friend and resource. This project showed me just how important that resource was. I often found myself bringing problems or questions about students and teaching strategies to the department and to the other teachers. The feedback and advice they gave me turned out to be incredibly helpful to me in maintaining a solid tool belt of skills and methods. 

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I believe that every student has the potential to learn, they just need the support and resources necessary to get them there, and it is my job as an educator to provide that to students, but I don't and shouldn't do it alone.