November 1, 2024

 What?
During my third visit to Agnes B. Hennessey School my partner and I taught a lesson about the civics and government of Brazil. Throughout the lesson we made introductions, had a lesson 2 recap, went over vocabulary for the civics unit, completed a voting activity, a read aloud, a constitution activity, and finally a kahoot. 

To start our lesson, we had the students go around and say their names and our names just as a refresher. As a small icebreaker we had the students tell us their favorite fall activity. During this time, the students talked about fun activities they do with their families such as leaf piles, pumpkin carving, and apple picking. I love learning about the students so these icebreakers are my favorite to complete. 
Miss Reynolds and I provided the students with vocabulary strips and a vocab wall before we began talking about civics and government. The vocabulary words we went over were, political process, common good, civic participation, democratic citizenship, rights, and responsibilities. For our first activity we completed a voting activity to determine how voting works in Brazil. This addressed rights, responsibilities, and civic participation. During this activity the students talked about how election day is this Tuesday November 5th. The students were able to complete the voting activity and then we read the results aloud. This showed the students how what you vote for does not always get the most votes. This went extremely well as the students were eager to learn about the different types of sources in the world. After the voting activity, we read some of Brazil’s civics and government from our book to the students. This included the different branches of government in Brazil and we compared it to the government in the United States. After learning about political processes and common good we began to explain our constitution activity. This activity let the students create their own constitution with their own set of five laws. This allowed the students to be creative while still learning about how laws and rights work in a system of government. We had a T-Chart on our chart paper with a constitution example. The students were also able to be creative during this time. After completing their own constitutions, they presented them to the group and read their laws that we have to follow in each of their towns.

After participating in the multiple activities, the students ended the lesson by completing a kahoot. This was a great way to see how the students successfully met the objectives. A few students struggled with this part and got many answers wrong. It showed that some of the objectives were not entirely met. By the end of the lesson the students were not 100% able to talk about key parts of Brazil’s civics. However, this gave me a great learning experience on what to change for the next lesson.

 

An area of weakness we could improve on is providing the students with another way to learn the vocabulary and materials. The students really struggled with the facts. They were so excited and eager to complete the fun activities we had planned that they did not retain all the necessary information. The students seemed more engaged when doing an interactive activity on their chromebooks compared to on physical paper. The students excelled and were so excited to open their laptops and go on the kahoot which made it much more exciting. However, in my next lesson I want the vocabulary and information to be more engaging for the students to actually understand. 

After further evaluation of my lesson, I believe that I need to include more beneficial ways for the students to actually learn and succeed within the lesson. Last week I focused on making it an even more memorable experience for them moving forward instead of also focusing on the material they need to learn.  The students were still eager and ready to learn throughout the lesson which was extremely helpful and positive. 

So What?

During this lesson, I learned that I have to continue to make the lesson interactive while still making sure learning is happening and taking place. We did a great job in making this lesson interactive and creative but slightly fell short on retaining the information which was proven during our kahoot assessment. This lesson we went right to the end of the time which meant I planned enough to complete the lesson. I always  have to continue to work on time management, as I felt like I was running out of time towards the end of my lesson. Even though we finished everything we had planned, I still felt as if I rushed towards the end. The more I practice and work on my time management, the smoother the lesson will go. Now that I know more about my students, I need to put the students’ abilities into more consideration for each lesson plan. I can add more electronic activities because they seemed so happy to participate in those. I can incorporate more coloring activities because they enjoy being creative. This lesson continued to expand my knowledge for the future lessons I teach. I was really happy with this experience, and I hope to continue to improve these skills to make me a better educator.

Now What?

This experience will influence my professional identity because I am still learning and trying to figure out the best ways for me to teach my students. Throughout this lesson, I found out that there are many ways I can improve when it comes to making sure the students are retaining the information being taught. I need to balance fun activities with actual learning. I am learning different ways on how to handle a group of students. I am learning different ideas and strategies that can make me a better teacher. Throughout this lesson, I taught civics and government which I had never done before. Teaching something new can be exciting and scary. Overall I think it went well, but there is always room to improve. This experience will influence how I plan/teach/assess in the future. I have learned how important it is to be organized, prepared, and how important timing is. For this lesson, I was very well prepared and organized. I had everything labeled and put together in an orderly fashion. If I was not prepared to teach this lesson it would not have gone as well as it did. I am extremely grateful for this experience, and I am excited to plan/teach/assess in the future.

Thank you,

Giana Fitzpatrick

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