The lesson that I choose to implement, into my seventh grade Advanced Language Arts classes was, on persuasive speeches, which is a completely new concept for them. Since there are stringent requirements for students to be placed in this class, I did not have to make any major adjustments to the lesson at this time, but I did have to extend the time allotted for this assignment for students that were having a hard time managing time, due to after school activities.
The goals for learning in this lesson involved students being able to deliver a focused-coherent persuasive speech, to distinguish fact from opinion, apply appropriate listening skills while in the audience. The lesson requires for students to take a position on a topic of interest, such as school uniforms, and then they needed to choose whether they were for or against their topic.
For the anticipatory activity we discussed what it was like when the disagreed with someone’s point of view, and what was necessary to change that persons mind to match your views. The students were then given a copy of a completed outline and I took some time to point out some of the different aspects of a persuasive speech. Since the majority of my students had never heard of persuasive speeches we viewed two decent examples of this types of speech; we then re-watched the speeches, which was a change from my original plan. During the revisit I stopped and pointed out the characteristics that worked and those that did not. The students then began searching for information to support their positions. After they gathered their information I introduced the outline that they were going to use to organize their information. I took the time to walk them through my thought processes and how I would organize my thoughts while doing this project, which is something that I added later. An individual outline was then created along with some sort of visual, to go along with their presentations, and finally they presented. Overall, the students really enjoyed the lesson, because what do teenagers like to do, argue, but the process of researching was very hard for them, and I think that more technology needs to be included in this lesson.
The assumptions that I made were items that caused me to do a lot more running around, and answering the same questions over and over. I assumed that students knew how to do internet searches on specific topics, but was I wrong. I had students searching using word that had nothing to do with their topic; I had students who had a hard time finding information that was specific enough to support their topic and position. When I do this lesson again, I am going to take time to show the students some tips and tricks on how to do internet searches. This will free up some of my time so I am able to spend more time on helping students coming up with the points that they want to get across to the audience.
The theory that I wanted to use, to teach this lesson, was the cognitive apprenticeship theory, but I found myself doing a lot more direct instruction rather than slowly allowing the students take control. Next time, I will take the opportunity to give some direct instruction, and then move to the modeling aspect of the lesson; because that part went over very well. I need to allow them to explore on their own, and I think that this will be possible if I spend more time on how to research. I also, would like to record all of the students’ speeches, so the students can go back and reflect on how they did. It might also be good to have them recorded and then watch a preview of their speech, so they can see what areas they need to improve upon, and it would also be a good tool for me to show progress.
Technology was really lacking in my lesson; I incorporated the use of our Smart Board, laptop computers, web searches, and programs to create a visual, but most students used PowerPoint. I need to expand their choices by introducing them to other tools like Wordle. The next time I am able to do this I would like to do some more checking for understanding throughout the entire lesson, so I thought that it might be fun if they had a question of the day, which relates to the elements of a persuasive speech, and they answered them using their mobile phones to submit their answers.
I had fun creating these speeches with my students. I think that they learned a lot on how to search when doing research, and to find reliable information to support their position. I do feel like I let them down by not utilizing more tools that I have learned about in my classes.
No comments:
Post a Comment