Scot Mortensen
Americana Intermediate School
4th/5th Modified Instruction Program

Lesson Reflection:

Understanding the Proclamation Through Visuals

I found myself evolving my lesson continually as I implemented and as it continued in my classroom. I have made the revisions to my lesson plan. It has evolved into something different then I expected initially.

Other than that, I was extremely pleased with my students work. The first day the lesson was implemented my students did a nice job deciphering between objective and subjective observations, and the students who listened to the audio tape, wanted to listen to it again the next day.
The next day in the computer lab, the students used the interactive power point and I was assuming that they would have their problems, but it worked beautifully. They were able to do all the tasks and only three hands went up. I knew I had something special when one of my students told me, “Mr. Mortensen we should do more stuff like this, because it’s cool.” The only problem with the power point was the fact that it was created on a PC, and the students use a Macintosh and some of the fonts and set-ups were a bit different. Teachers need to see if the format works well enough before having the students participate. Also, I was told by our computer technician that the power point could be put into an Apple QuickTime Movie Format, so that is something that I may do in the future.

I originally did not have a poster board with examples and I later decided that would be important, and a teacher’s guide I thought would help many teachers gain a better understanding for things they could do. So I put one together with some photos and extra ideas and places to go for more information

The link books are a great tool, and I originally thought I would do them as we have done other link books during the year, but after actually thinking about the process I changed my mind on the format. It works better and allows students to incorporate all concepts in this lesson. It illustrates the idea and definition of the Emancipation Proclamation and effectively demonstrates that the students did learn how to search for primary sources and cite them appropriately with modifications of course based on their abilities.

All in all, I thought the lesson was really good. My students now want to research all kinds of things, especially the thirteen colonies because that is what we are now studying. We’ll see what I can do, because in the words of my students, “this is cool.”