First Lesson - Civil Rights Vocabulary

Last week was my first time teaching a lesson to my Literacy class and also my first time videotaping myself teaching and I learned a lot from the experience. Here is my lesson plan. First, I learned that it is really hard to plan out how long lessons will take in advance. Maybe as I become a more experienced teacher and I get to know my class better I will get a better idea about timing exercises but when starting out it seems especially important to be flexible. This means making a list of the really important points to hit each lesson but being able to skip an activity or two if other sections of the class are really engaging the class or taking longer than anticipated. It also means having a backup plan with more things to do in case we work through everything in the lesson plan faster than anticipated. My lesson went a little faster than I had planned on, so I found myself scrambling a bit at the end to try to stretch it out and it still came up two or three minutes short of fifteen minutes. If I had one or two more quick activities or discussion questions up my sleeve then it would have been easy to keep the class engaged for a couple more minutes.

It is fairly easy for me to off of the cuff when I am just discussing things I am interested in, but I found that it is harder for me to do that when I am in "teacher mode" presenting a lesson. I think that comfortability will come the more I teach, but for now I should work on making sure I know my material really well before teaching it in a lesson. I was not very worried about the lesson coming into it because I was just presenting to a few fellow students in my class but once I was up "on stage" I still found myself getting nervous and forgetting points I wanted to make.

Watching the video of myself was pretty difficult because I was cringing the whole time but definitely a worthwhile experience. Here is the video of my lesson for reference. I can see that I struggle with staying still while I am talking. I move around, I shift my weight from foot to foot, and I move my hands a lot. I know for myself that I think better when I am moving, so when I am anxious I fall into the trap of fidgeting around. Next time I teach in class I am going to work on paying more attention to what I am doing with my body. I also say "um" a fair amount, though honestly less than I had feared. I think that if I can keep videotaping myself during lessons and if I practice my presentation more next time so it is a little more ingrained in my memory then I can also work on paying more attention to the filler words that I use.

I think that my activities were effective in teaching the vocabulary but it is hard to know for certain, because my students were my classmates who were already fairly comfortable with the subject of Civil Rights. The PC I was working toward is not a part of my original unit plan standards but I thought it worked really well for this lesson in particular.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.11-12.3: Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.

I chose to focus on three vocabulary words (race, movement, and civil rights), and to start with a group brainstorm on each to help students clear up misconceptions and see how the vocabulary might be used in context. I then asked them to write their own sentence using the word to make sure they understood it enough to be able to use it correctly. Finally, I gave out a homework assignment. They were to do research on some of the relevant vocabulary that we had not yet covered in class. Each person was given a specific role to focus on - either Etymology Expert, Root Researcher, or Synonym/antonym Explorer. I used each of these strategies on a different word during the powerpoint, so they had examples of what they had to do.

Moving forward I plan on not having any more lessons completely dedicated to vocabulary, but to keep reviewing throughout the unit through little activities and assignments. I can see how students are doing with the vocabulary by assessing using essays, selected response quizzes, and personal communication. We are going to be reading a variety of different writings by different activists of varying levels, both from the 60s and more recently, so students will have many opportunities to see the words in different contexts and I will have many opportunities to see how their understanding is progressing.