The lesson from SAS that I chose is a writing and research project on 19th century American reformers. I didn't find many of the projects included on this site to be particularly interesting for the teaching/learning style that I hope to have, but they all do offer the opportunity of revision and expansion to create a more compatible lesson or project. As such, it may be more helpful to think of these as ideas for projects and lessons, rather than ready-to-go ones.
The project I chose was one that I found that I could use almost as written. It allows a lot of leeway for the teacher, and acts really as an outline and list of resources for a research project. The thing that drew me to this one in particular was that it incorporates several different, important skills that mostly all students need to work on: researching, writing, empathizing, analyzing, etc. It also allows for an element of choice, which I find to be incredibly important when doing research. Starting with some of the online resources that the website suggests, students will choose a reform movement that interests them. They create a fictional character based on historical facts and write several journal entries from that person's perspective.
One way that I might modify or add to the assignment is to have students choose reforms that were happening simultaneously but were in some sort of opposition to one another. Then through their fictionalized character, they would have a debate about the merits of their reform and the deficits of the other. This would add even more skill building to the project: public speaking and argument formation.
2 comments:
I agree that many of the lessons I found would be a good place to start, or a nice piece of a lesson. I had trouble finding things that I felt incredibly useful myself. I like the fact that you thought about projects that have multiple skills and layers involved. Those are the types of lessons I want to teach in my classroom as well.
I also felt the same way in looking through the lessons and projects. I found a lot of good ideas, but they weren't necessarily applicable to a real classroom. Sometimes I felt that the lessons were never really enacted in real classroom settings. For the project I chose, it has students draw an absolute monarch's palace and portrait. This seems more applicable to a middle school setting, but we don't even teach this in middle school. I said I would definitely have to change things around to make it work, but it still gives me some ideas.
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