video

video - tapped lesson reflection

The lesson that I chose to be video-taped was a jigsaw lesson in which students were first given background information on immigration after 1870. They were first told about general trends in information using a PowerPoint and a guided note taking chart to help organize the information. After this, the students were broken into groups and given information about Chinese, Greek, Italian, Russian and Austria-Hungary immigrants.

They were required to read the pieces of information and extract information about where the immigrants came from, why they left, what they did upon arriving in the United States, and how the country reacted. After that, the groups broke up, and at least one member from each of the original groups formed a new group. Students then taught each other about the group they learned about, allowing for every student to gain an understanding of the similarities and differences among immigrant groups coming after 1870.
This lesson meets a few of the PASS standards. First, it allows students to engage in higher-order thinking.

The students during this lesson had to generalize what trends were found in their immigrant group and also synthesize the information in the passages to come to their own conclusions about immigration patterns from their specific country. This lesson also allowed for deep knowledge. Instead of just simply taking notes on all of the information in the same way the lesson began, students were given a chance to go beyond generalizations on immigration across the world, and focus in on learning about one immigrant group in great detail. They became experts on their groups, giving them a chance to better understand the connections between conditions in home countries and the attractiveness of the United States at this time. Finally, students were involved with a great amount of substantive conversation with each other and at times during the lesson, me as a teacher. Students had to decide in their first group what the answers were to the questions by discussing with each other what they read and how to best synthesize and generalize. Furthermore, students then educate each other, a great example of extended conversational exchanges on the subject material. Because the students are sitting in groups, as a teacher I was able to walk around the room and discuss the content with the students on a more personal level than standing in front of the room.

When watching the lesson unfold on the video tape, I was happy with it’s ability to meet the PASS standards and meet the SOL knowledge objectives for that certain subject. I was glad to see the interaction it allowed for both me as a teacher and the students, interaction that was for the most part on topic. I was able to move around the room and help students as needed, and keep them on task. One problem I had was evident in the video, which was the rearrangement of groups that took a much longer time then I thought it would. This to me means in the future, I will be sure to come up with a better system for redistributing the groups so I will not waste as much time. I did notice that I tend to fidget with my earrings, and I did catch a few stumbles, both literally and in my speaking. However, I believe that with a new awareness of such behaviors I will be able to better command the classroom in the future, and make such lessons even more meaningful to the students.