By Mark Heintz
Context
I have two main focuses as I write this weekly blog. Two driving questions that I have in my mind while making decisions. They are:
- How do I know if my students know?
- How do I get them to know if they know?
Whether that is a skill or content, I want to know if they know it. I no longer think it is acceptable for me to guess or get a feeling on whether or not they know it. Getting the students to know if they know it is downright hard, but I am really attempting to get to a point where the students can recognize their understandings or progress on their skill levels and content knowledge. Therefore, the purpose of this year of reflection is to see how I make progress towards these two goals and elicit feedback from staff, students, and hopefully people who follow along on the journey. You can read how last week went here.
Week Twenty-two: Answer the Question
This week the content focus was primarily on the Industrial Revolution from 1750-1900. Here were the standards for this week:
- Students will understand the political, economic, and social changes brought upon by the Industrial Revolution.
This week’s skill focus was still centered on analyzing charts, maps, and texts and pulling evidence from documents to support a claim.
- Write one cause/effect, and one comparative short response that reflects an understanding of essential content.
- Analyze charts, maps, graphs, and texts.
- Write a thesis statement, contextualize a prompt, and draw evidence from two documents to support the thesis.
Cite Specific Evidence
This semester, I am including, or trying to include student’s perspective on the week. For this week’s post, I asked two students to document their learning on the standards. It was a great week to do this, for I missed two days this week due to a family emergency. I shared a Google Doc to document their progress. Each day, I looked at the shared document to view their understandings of what took place during the day.
Nicole and John volunteered to document their learning and reflect this week.
Here is what Nicole had to say.
Evidence
Nicole: I’m pretty sure most kids believed that this was a very fun way of interactively learning the urban ways of a small town. It was a bit of a long process but I enjoyed it a lot, so did my partner and most of the people in the class. It also came with a cause and effect chart that we filled out along with filling in a sheet that ended with about 90 houses, factories, roads, and bridges. It was a fun project but maybe about 8 students out of our class didn’t see the point of doing it. They didn’t see how it connected to the lesson of the week. Overall, we did enjoy it.
John
John: We were asked to write 7 reasons as to why the Industrial Revolution occurred in England from a document provided.
Reasoning
John: Mr. Heintz actually had this printed on a piece of paper and cut the paper into each of the stages. I was able to successfully provide an example for Stage 1. Stage 2 happened to be a little tricky for me. It could have been because the activity wasn’t explained correctly but also from my part. I tend to overthink simple tasks sometimes which does get in the way of things. I felt the idea of the activity was good but I don’t think it was presented in the most effective way.
Evidence
John: There was a substitute today. We were told to work on an “Urban Game” activity. The game consisted of twenty rounds and a cause and effect chart for each round. This activity was a bit longer than the preceding activities but it showed how England was able to industrialize. By the end of the game, the entire sheet of paper was filled with houses, factories, railroad tracks etc. There were a change and effect for each round. Herra and I both worked this, I had the change and effect chart opened while she had rounds opened on her iPad. Aside from the game being a bit lengthy, the activity itself helped show how England industrialized and the effects of it. By Mark Heintz
John: Mr. Heintz was absent today as well. The goal for today was to answer the following short answer question and to post it in a discussion post on Schoology. I felt strong with writing the short answer question because the responses to these types of questions are only three sentences long as opposed to DBQs where we write paragraph long responses. I feel like we don’t do enough practice with short answer questions. These questions could even be a warm-up because of the time it takes to do the questions.
Reasoning
John: This week’s folder focused on Industrialization and Imperialism. The assignment to me about thirty minutes to compete. The checklist asked for at least 95 percent on the quizzes but I would like to get a hundred on each. Getting one wrong signifies that missed 3-5 percent of the skill. By doing some of the quizzes over really helps me solidify the information. Sometimes the questions are repetitive. I feel that if stimulus question were integrated into these quizzes then it would help us prepare for the AP test in May.
Reflection
John: The Industrial Revolution in England, the causes, and its effect were easy to grasp considering that the Industrial Revolution was covered in previous years. The effects are self-explanatory in many cases. The checklists for the week really help me understand the material better. I’ve learned that doing the checklist ahead benefits me because all the material in the checklist folder is covered during class. I remember that with England, abundance was the driving force of their revolution and from there I’m able to give effect E.g, the abundance of coal lead the way for better machines to be constructed. The large population of people was able to work these machines, especially the educated ones.