5.

PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY

a) Teacher Reflection (InTASC 9)

This section is to be completed AFTER teaching the lesson. Discuss the following and
include specific examples for each:
1. Describe the portions/aspects of the lesson that worked well and why.
2. Describe the portions/aspects of the lesson that did not go as planned and why.
3. Discuss what you would do differently next time to support student learning
4. Provide evidence from the lesson that allows you to determine whether or not
each of the outcomes were met.
5. Describe how you will use data from assessments to inform future lessons.

Overall, I felt the lesson was very effective in fetting the students to imagine themselves
in the place of the framers of the constitution. I used notecards for students to indicate
their feedback on the lesson from 1st hour. I received only 5 responses from students,
who were asked to write something they enjoyed about the lesson, and something they
wish could be improved. Their responses are recorded below.

Student Feedback 1st Hour:

Student 1
Liked: “The constitutional convention activity that we did was fun and exciting”
Improve: “Do more activities like that.”

Student 2
Liked: *blank*
Improve: “Start bringing in food, I work better with food” (student noted that he did not eat
in the mornings)

Student 3
Liked: “I liked how you put us in two different groups and made us argue with each
other.”
Improve: “Nothing, really this class too easy”

Student 4
Liked: “I like how it was professional and I actually learned something”.
Improve: *blank*

Student 5
Liked: “Sticky notes, we made our desks in circles, learning about the constitutional
convention”
Improve: *blank*
Obviously, I would have wished for participation from the full class, as not everyone
turned in a response (or even a full response) but it was valuable feedback. Students
highlighted areas that I thought worked well with the lesson as well. They liked the
interactivity of the lesson, as well as that they got to debate and argue. I thought these
areas all worked well too, and that it helped with student engagement. They also
appreciated the sticky note Do Now, which I thought also made our review much more
effective, as we could target specific areas the students wanted help with, allowing me
and Mario to “work smarter, not harder”. They all indicated that they would enjoy
activities like that in the future, and moving forward with my practice I will be sure to
implement more of them.

I think that the things we could have improved upon were noted by one student, in that
the lesson was too easy. I did intentionally reduce the load of the work they would do as
the convention, so that we could complete the lesson within one day. In the future, as
Kaitlin noted, it would likely be more realistic if we were able to spread the lesson and
instruction out over multiple days. That will allow for richer discussion and to implement
more depth into the lesson and the questions students are asked in the activity.

Kaitlin also mentioned ideas and resources that might be useful to further ground the
lesson contextually if we were to repeat it in the future. I was admittedly ashamed that I
did not think to use the idea of emergency managers or state control as a factor for why
Detroit would want to secede in the first place. That would bring cultural relevance to the
lesson, and allow students to get connected with the issues that impact their
communities every day. I also liked the idea of showing Kendrick Lamar’s video Legacy,
while I mentioned the influence the wives of the founding fathers had on prompting them
to write the constitution, I ultimately could use that video as a more culturally relevant
example of showing women as decision makers in society.

I also would like to have engaged students more who normally do not answer questions.
In the future, I would like to use a random name generator or popsicle sticks to show that
all students have a voice and a stake in learning. I think a re-arrangement of the class,
so that not all the students are facing the teacher, allows for a more equal discussion
amongst the class.

In the future, I would also like to improve upon the pacing of the lesson, as I mentioned
above, it would likely work better over 2 days than one, allowing more time for students
perhaps to research the district they were assigned to understand the reasons why an
area would be more supportive of local vs city-wide control, for example. I could also
introduce other forms of government around the world, so that they would have other
models to draw from, besides the United States.

Overall, I think the lesson was a nice change of pace for the students. Although there
were things to improve upon, the positive reception from the students indicated to me
that lessons similar to this in the future, would allow for more student engagement, thus
increasing their retention of the content they have been exposed to.