Let's Explore The Anatomy of a Lesson!

 

I have often posted that one of my biggest goals as a graduate student is to master the art of lesson plans. The first step in doing so is to evaluate an existing one. So, I chose to pick apart a lesson that was previously designed to teach about the 13 British Colonies in America. I chose this lesson because I have always loved studying content about colonial America. When I was in fourth grade, I learned how to write with a colonial quill pen, the art of candle-making and in fifth grade, I learned the art of calligraphy because I greatly enjoyed learning the ways of colonial America.

This lesson is a mixed salad of theories, methods, strategies and techniques. For example, there are slides with written content which is clearly designed to aid the lecture technique of direct instruction. Slides that involved lecture were evenly dispersed through out the lesson and would not have overwhelmed the students. This lesson also uses different forms of technology to engage students keeping their minds active. For example, the lesson begins with the Quizlet application which provides a wealth of fun games and study methods such as flash cards. It is important to note the presents of a competitive feature in some of these games. I believe strongly that competition brings the best out of all of us by giving us a standard to aim for. However, we must also consider that competition can produce an undesired outcome such as frustration, anger and low self-esteem. Educators can avoid this by changing how we define “winning.” For example, in-stead of declaring the student with the highest achievements in the class “the winner”, we encourage all students to set individual goals for themselves. Weather or not the students achieve their goals determines if they have “won.” As educators, we must do everything we can to facilitate a friendly competitive environment where students see their peers as mentors and not adversaries and rivals. Both of these methods clearly stem from the information processing theory. After careful review of this lesson, I feel there is an overwhelming presence of videos which takes away from valuable instruction time. I firmly believe students understand videos to signal nap-time therefore, I would use them sparingly. This lesson concludes with a simulation of life in the seventeenth century. The students are tasked with creating their own stories based on authentic circumstances and research. A simulation is a relevant way of testing students through their ability to apply what they have learned.

Overall, I conclude this is a useful lesson that has a place in the educator’s toolkit. The graphics and use of technologies such as Flipgrid and Quizlet provide students with a variety of different ways to respond to lessons. The thoughtful questions distributed through out the slides encourage the students to think about the content beside it on the slide. The down side to this however, is, that students may not pay attention in reality because they may not get called on to answer the question or they believe someone else will answer. There are holes in this lesson but it certainly has a solid foundation to be reimagined into something truly great. 

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