Week 10: Presentations and Sternberg's Framework

Once again I thoroughly enjoyed the lesson plans that my classmates presented this week. It was apparent that everyone took a vast amount of time and effort to complete their units and they each produced truly fantastic ideas. I think each and every single one of my classmates will someday soon become fantastic teachers whose students cannot wait to attend their classes each day. They will create lesson plans that are informative, engaging, and applicable to their students' lives and their students will love them!

As I began researching for my second unit plan, I wanted to set the bar even higher for myself in relation to my first unit. In many ways, I believe that my first unit was well organized and if it would have been taught in the classroom I think it would have been an effective learning tool. However, there were some aspects of certain lessons that I thought could have been improved or conducted in different ways that would have made the lesson plans even better. My second unit is on the American Revolution and again I will not be able to teach it in my current novice teaching placement but I know I will be able to use it in my future classroom, perhaps even during my student teaching experience. I am currently trying to decide how to break up my unit into four lesson plans in an interesting and creative way. I could just break it up in terms of battles or in a chronological format, but I want to do something beyond the timeline method in order to more effectively engage my students in the lessons. I want to include aspects of the Revolution that most students will not have heard about before such as that Benjamin Franklin's son, William, was a loyalist and the war ruined their relationship or that Washington's son fought in the Battle of Yorktown and Washington was mourning his death while everyone else was celebrating America's victory. I think these kinds of stories will make the war come to life for the students. The American Revolution is filled with valuable primary source materials and interesting stories that I cannot wait to implement and try out in my lesson plans!