Working Inquiry Question: How might increased transparency with students in regards to my unit and lesson planning, and desired learning outcomes affect my students?
I am looking at two artifacts for this analysis, the first two lessons for my Inquiry into Public Education unit. I intended for the first class to be a discussion on the different issues, concerns, and questions students had about the education system in Philadelphia and in the country, with an introduction to the research project at the end of the class.
The introductory lesson plan is one of my only lesson plans for this unit that has both an enduring understanding and a separate essential question. Though the enduring understanding remained the same throughout the unit, I had difficulty writing essential questions that applied to each lesson, as I was usually planning the lessons only a few days in advance, and changed them quite often depending on what my CM had planned. For this reason, many of my subsequent lesson plans did not have any specific EQs. This EQ was used as a focusing discussion question and did help me frame the class conversation.
I followed the first few points in the procedures section, however as our discussion carried on, I knew that we would not have enough time to explain the research component of the unit. The discussions with the two senior classes were very lively and many students wanted to share their ideas and opinions on education, school, and the inequalities they saw. Although we had great conversations that I would have liked to continue, as we reached the end of the class, I had to stop them so that I could explain the homework, which was to read one of two articles online and find statistical information about their neighborhood school. This was not the homework assignment that I had originally intended to give, however it was modified based on the progress we had made during the class.
As this next work was explained, I could see confusion on some of the students’ faces, because there still had been no mention of the research project and paper that would frame the unit. I also wanted to pass out, or at least discuss, a unit/assignment description which may have clarified some students’ questions, however my CM and I did not have time to finalize something before this class, and she wanted more time to look over an assignment overview sheet that I had created.
For our class the next day, the two class discussions were similar to the conversations the first day, with more of a specific focus on Philadelphia, and Philadelphia schools. However, during the second half of the class, when my CM and I had broken the students up into small research groups, there was still very little explicit direction on what kind of research project they would be doing, which, as I noted on my plans from that day, caused a lot of confusion.
I found the class discussions to be very inspiring, exciting, and reflective of the energy the students had when talking about something that affected their lives very closely, and I am not opposed to this more open, constructivist, approach to an inquiry-based unit, however I think that there should have been more explanation as to how the unit would progress. With the analysis of my introductory lesson plans, I wanted to address the lack of clarity and transparency when trying to guide the students through the class discussions and their homework. Because there was little explanation of how our conversation and the reading the students would be doing was incorporated into the overall unit, there was a lot of confusion, frustration, and uncertainty among the students.
I am looking at two artifacts for this analysis, the first two lessons for my Inquiry into Public Education unit. I intended for the first class to be a discussion on the different issues, concerns, and questions students had about the education system in Philadelphia and in the country, with an introduction to the research project at the end of the class.
The introductory lesson plan is one of my only lesson plans for this unit that has both an enduring understanding and a separate essential question. Though the enduring understanding remained the same throughout the unit, I had difficulty writing essential questions that applied to each lesson, as I was usually planning the lessons only a few days in advance, and changed them quite often depending on what my CM had planned. For this reason, many of my subsequent lesson plans did not have any specific EQs. This EQ was used as a focusing discussion question and did help me frame the class conversation.
I followed the first few points in the procedures section, however as our discussion carried on, I knew that we would not have enough time to explain the research component of the unit. The discussions with the two senior classes were very lively and many students wanted to share their ideas and opinions on education, school, and the inequalities they saw. Although we had great conversations that I would have liked to continue, as we reached the end of the class, I had to stop them so that I could explain the homework, which was to read one of two articles online and find statistical information about their neighborhood school. This was not the homework assignment that I had originally intended to give, however it was modified based on the progress we had made during the class.
As this next work was explained, I could see confusion on some of the students’ faces, because there still had been no mention of the research project and paper that would frame the unit. I also wanted to pass out, or at least discuss, a unit/assignment description which may have clarified some students’ questions, however my CM and I did not have time to finalize something before this class, and she wanted more time to look over an assignment overview sheet that I had created.
For our class the next day, the two class discussions were similar to the conversations the first day, with more of a specific focus on Philadelphia, and Philadelphia schools. However, during the second half of the class, when my CM and I had broken the students up into small research groups, there was still very little explicit direction on what kind of research project they would be doing, which, as I noted on my plans from that day, caused a lot of confusion.
I found the class discussions to be very inspiring, exciting, and reflective of the energy the students had when talking about something that affected their lives very closely, and I am not opposed to this more open, constructivist, approach to an inquiry-based unit, however I think that there should have been more explanation as to how the unit would progress. With the analysis of my introductory lesson plans, I wanted to address the lack of clarity and transparency when trying to guide the students through the class discussions and their homework. Because there was little explanation of how our conversation and the reading the students would be doing was incorporated into the overall unit, there was a lot of confusion, frustration, and uncertainty among the students.