Level IV US Observation#2 Reflection

To begin with, the standard of my Social Studies lesson was to describe the pioneer life in Florida. I arrived at the idea of doing a lesson on pioneers when I came across a lesson in the Florida Social Studies book. I decided that my essential question would be: How did the pioneers adapt to their new life in Florida?

I wanted to intrigue my students at the very beginning of the lesson so I chose to do a photo analysis of early Florida pioneers. Primary sources are always great to use in any Social Studies lesson. I utilized two photos and asked them to write down observations and inferences of what they saw. For the first picture they wrote them down but for the second one we discussed them due to a lack of time. Before we began discussing, I made sure they understood the difference between an observation and an inference. At 2:45 in the video, a student explained that the difference is that observations are what you see and inferences are a conclusion you make from what you see.

After we discussed observations and inferences from both pictures, I made sure to state my objective which was that we would learn how the pioneers adapted to their life in Florida. Since mostly likely some students would be unclear about the meaning of the word adapt, I made sure to explain it and have a visual on the board. After this, I read them an excerpt about pioneers from the book and asked a couple of higher-order thinking questions based off of it. Then, I explained their performance task which was the following: Pretend you are a pioneer back in the day and write a letter to a friend or a relative describing your new life in Florida, and make sure to include the ways you adapted to this new life.

In order to complete this performance task they needed a couple of things. One, they needed role. Based in their reading level I assigned them either the role of a child, a woman/mother, or a man/father. Two, they needed technology. They were each given a laptop to use in order to obtain information about which kind of pioneer they were. I only allowed them to use one website. However, this website provided plenty of information. It had the most amount of information about pioneer men, which is why the highest level readers were assigned that role. There was the second most amount of information about pioneer women and lastly about pioneer children.

After watching the video of my lesson and looking at student work, I am convinced that students understood the early pioneer life in Florida. The first thing I looked at was the video. I noticed that the students made some awesome inferences, which takes a great deal of higher-order thinking. For example, at 5:15 in the video, one student made an inference that the windows were open in the house because they did not have air-conditioning. They also gave great responses to the higher-order thinking questions I asked after reading the small excerpt about pioneers from the book. I could see that the students were engaged in the lesson and even more engaged with the technology aspect of it.

The letters were very well done. Although all of the students included information about their specific pioneer. However, what most students failed to do was write it in the perspective of a pioneer. Only a couple of the students actually used the first person point of view versus the third person. In the letters the students included the many things pioneers did. Pioneer men had to grow crops and take care of the land. They had many jobs such as blacksmiths and cowmen. Pioneer women were very busy as well. It was the job of pioneer mothers to educate their daughters as well as do all the household chores. These chores included cooking, cleaning, laundry, making candles, and take care of the garden. Pioneer children also had responsibilities. The girls helped their mother with the chores of the house and the boys learned many skills such as hunting from their father.

My three goals for this lesson were to ask higher-order thinking questions, to make sure all students were participating, and to use positive praise. I am normally okay with using positive praise and with getting all students to participate, but I want to work on it even more. I try to make sure they all participate by using the participation sticks and by calling on students even when they are not raising their hands to make sure they are paying attention. On the other hand, one thing I always struggle with is asking higher-order thinking questions so I tried my best to ask a couple of them in this lesson.

I learned from engaging in the V-note that I need to work on all three goals more. The one I was best at was participation. I am normally good with not calling on the same students more than once so that all students get a chance. Also, if students are not participating I use the participation sticks I made or randomly call on them to make sure they are paying attention. I thought I had used positive praise various times in my lesson but I saw that I only did it about two times. I asked more higher-level questions than I normally do, but I still have to work on asking better ones and more of them.

I do not think that V-Note helped me in my lesson goal. Perhaps it helped me see how much of each goal I executed in my lesson, but I feel like I could have done this by just watching the video of my lesson and taking notes. After coding and analyzing the video, I would change the lesson by asking more higher-order thinking questions at the beginning when we were making inferences. Another thing I do differently would be to use more of the participation sticks and to use more positive praise. They were getting talkative at times and I feel I could have used more positive praise to effectively quiet them down.