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Lesson Description and Reflection

Lesson Description:  The lesson I decided to teach was a New Deal Coalition activity. I wanted the students to understand what the New Deal was all about and also be able to learn about the complexities of passing legislation and the different moving parts that need to be in place for that to happen. This lesson was at the end of a unit on the Great Depression and New Deal (as an approach to fixing the economic crisis of the United States). The students had a lot of background knowledge on the topic already since they had studied the economic boom after World War I, the primary causes of the Great Depression, and how difficult life was for most of the people in the United States during the Great Depression. They had been introduced to a couple of the New Deal programs so it felt like they had a good preparation to be able to discuss what each different group (Corporate Executive, Black Activist, Labor Unionist, Wealthy Southern Landowner, Unemployed Person) wanted from the gover...
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Constructivism TIPR

Current Teacher Behavior 1. The Constructivist strategies I've seen the most in the classrooms I've observed would have to be Jigsaw-type activities or Reciprocal Learning like Literacy Circles. Some classrooms are very lecture-based and I struggled to find any constructivist learning strategies, but Jigsaw's are used to break up class material and have groups "specialize" in their topic with others and then break up and teach it to others. This effective strategy for learning by teaching is also used in the Lit Circle's I saw where students all read a text and had to prepare different aspects of it to share in a small group. The main tenets I see at play here are Structure, because the teacher does try to start and end collaborative learning with a discussion on how this information fits into the bigger picture of what they're learning, and probably Readiness, because she definitely has to adjust the concepts and lessons for their level of understandin...
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Identity TIPR

Current Teacher Behaviors 1. Which of Erikson's psychosocial crises are the children in the class facing (may be more than one)? Which of Marcia's identity states seem(s) to be most prevalent? What specific teacher behaviors do you observe that either help or hinder the students to successfully navigate their identities? Cite specific examples.  While I understand that Erikson's crises are mostly related to specific age ranges, I do feel that students are facing a variety of them and not just the Identity/Role Confusion crises that is typical of their age. I feel that many of the students at the specific high school I've spent time at are still struggling with the crises involving Industry?Inferiority. Being that the social background of this school includes mostly middle to upper class students, many of them have very involved parents  that have "helped" them succeed in lower grades by involving themselves too much in the student's work. This has led t...
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Contexts of Development TIPR

Current Teacher Behavior 1. Describe how the teacher implements a consideration of the students' physical development and/or Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Model into instruction, assessment, and/or procedures. What more could/should the teacher do in this regard? Provide specific examples. To be honest, I haven't seen much consideration of this concept in any of the classes I've observed. Occasionally a teacher will acknowledge to students that they are part of a bigger unit as far as society and their communities? But I'm not sure if that's an example of this within the classroom or not really. This could also have to do with the fact that the school I've been at is quite homogeneous as far as its student body? So teachers can generalize a lot of their approach in this regard because most students come from similar cultural backgrounds as far as religion, race, ethnicity, family structure, etc. For physical development considerations, one of the teache...
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Vygotsky TIPR

Current Teacher Behavior 1. What evidence do you see in your field experience of specific teacher behaviors that are related to Vygotsky's theory of sociocultural cognitive development? Specifically address the use of More Knowledgeable Other(s), how the teacher determines the students' Zones of Proximal Development, the types of scaffolding/assisted learning provided, how the teacher helps students internalize the information, the types of cultural and technological tools used, etc. Most of the classes I've observed have group or partner work as part of instruction. This is an example of learners using a more knowledgeable other to understand a concept. Sometimes group work is organized into a jigsaw type activity where a student becomes an "expert" in a topic and then becomes the MKO to the rest of the group as they teach them what they learned, other times the students might fill that role based on placement from the teacher as one that is doing better than...
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Piaget TIPR

Current Teacher Behaviors 1. What evidence do you see in your field experience of specific teacher behaviors that are related to Piaget's theory of cognitive development? Specifically address how the teacher introduces disequilibrium, aids in the process of adaptation (separate assimilation and accommodation, please), the stage(s) to which the teacher is gearing instruction, etc. The most common thing I see in classes I've observed is the effort the teachers make to link the new information they are teaching to previous material they have already covered. This is an example of trying to help resolve the student's disequilibrium by assimilating the new material into schemas that already exist within the student's minds. Doing this helps them retain the information as well since they can relate to it something they already know and understand. At the same time, I occasionally saw teachers attempt to do that same assimilation approach when they saw students appear to b...
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Assessment TIPR

Current Teacher Behaviors 1. How does the teacher assess student learning? Identify specific instances of informal and formal, formative and summative assessment and explain the types of assessments (e.g., self-assessment, portfolio, project, performance, etc.) that are used. How valid, reliable, biased, and practical are these assessments? In every classroom I've been in I really have seen a variety of assessments taking place. Some examples of formal formative include the starters students have to complete. In an Ancient World History class I observed, the teacher was able to use the fact that only two students were even able to complete the starter to realize that her instruction on the topic had been inadequate and needed repeating. Some of them use this as a graded assignment based on content, others simply award participation points if its done at all. To be honest, I see this as a less than reliable way of assessing each student's understanding of the topic because o...
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