My Best Lesson

Haylie Culp
EDSE 490
 My Best Lesson
Reflection
For this unit, I followed the PLC pacing guides that allowed 9 class periods to teach five
standards that covered two topic areas: political parties and economics. The pacing guide
suggested using the iCivics material, totaling 12 readings and work sheets and providing a fifty-
question summative. As I read through each of the readings I saw many opportunities for deeper
and personalized study, but couldnt figure out how to integrate it within the time frame. At the
next PLC meeting, I presented a 9 class period Beta-Mode Genius Hour. As I talked with the
other teachers I understood it was a lofty goal with many structural needs for successful
implementation, but the student project outcomes and topic depths, in my opinion, justified the
front-loaded work on my part to best promote my goals for student directed learning. I began by
identifying the end goal and the working backwards to establish key structural components, and
student check points for success. I then cross referenced what I established with the resources I
found from teacher leaders like A.J. Julilani in order to marry the concept of Genius Hour with
the standards I was aiming to meet. I think I would go this route again for planning because I
think it challenged me to embrace what I felt was best practice and then measure that against
someone with experience. This was a good reflection opportunity for me, and other areas helped
me boost confidence when my thoughts were validated through others best practices, or offered
ways to refine my process where they didnt quite align.
Since I was asking students to take charge of their learning to create a project based on
one of four topic areas, but I wanted them to understand the foundational information needed to
help their peers develop ideas, I created mini lessons to take place of traditional instructional
practices. This allowed for all of the class time to be dedicated to working on the projects and
conferencing with peers or myself, rather than resulting in tons of research that needed to be
done independently. For this I looked to the Appollo School, a leader in standards and project
based education (Wimmer & Ward; Gonzalez, 2017). Students were able to watch the video at
home, take a formative quiz through Quizizz that included memes based on their answers to
attempt to create a low stake recall method that increases long term learning, as evidenced in
Make it Stick, a book that helps teachers understand an implement techniques for cognitive recall
. The combination of non-traditional content delivery, assessment and peer collaboration were
the best practices I could use, but to improve my practice for the future I would spend more time
working with students independently and having more structured conversations for students to
have with each other to maximize the effectiveness of the peer conferences. Way I could have
refined this is through the Guppy Tank presentation. This presentation took place on day 3,
and gave the students a format to use to present their idea or area of interest within their
standard, what they wanted to do with it, and what their product would look like. Unfortunately,
I did not give enough structure for the feedback to be as effective as I would have liked, though
the conversations were good and the presentations were effective for the most part. In the future,
the increased structure to the conversations and presentations is a modification I would make to
help students be most successful in their communication.
I have mostly ninth grade, with several tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades mixed into each
class. Since developmentally I have many students in different areas, I needed to address the
different ability levels. When I planned the lesson, I knew it may be more difficult for some
students to conquer the more abstract thinking, so I created modifications for students to consult
if needed. The modifications ranged from basic topic application to research question stems:
 Can a third party be successful? How & why does the government fund social welfare
programs like SNAP, WIC or Medicare? How does ___________ compare or contrast
with _______________?
The product ideas were initially brainstormed, but since many students were comfortable with
slideshows, they tried to justify how making slide shows could build grit, since their mission was
two fold; justify how you met the standard, and describe how this project helped you build grit,
they all agreed to look for alternative projects. I was surprised that so many students didnt know
what they were interested in to use for a jumping off point for their final project. In order to help
those students find good free resources to create their projects, I made a matrix that contained
animation software, video production, infographic tools, ebook templates and many other options
for students to use to create their final products. I was also inspired at some of the initiative
students took to record video, upload it to youtube, monetize their videos and research how
vloggers get paid, and how the government takes out the taxes. There were two different students
who took that approach, and during our conferences I uncovered they have been vlogging for a
while and build rather impressive followings for people who barely meet the age requirement to
have an account! I appreciate that I was able to learn things like that through the personal
conferences that I probably wouldnt have traditionally uncovered.
Analysis
My students all were able to demonstrate that they not only learned their prescribed
standard, but they could all indicate how to apply that standard to the world around them. Some
did this by dealing explicitly with their terminology, others created childrens stories to teach
about the political parties and the philosophies behind them , but each was able to justify how
they felt they met the standard they set out to meet. As a summative assessment students wrote
one topic sentence and 5 supporting sentences that helped them formalize the content and the
skill they learned.
I believe this learning model was effective because students had the freedom to look
within their focus areas and find things they were interested in to research and create from.
Additionally, it allowed students to select self-paced projects so students who worked quickly
were able to choose loftier projects, and could explain their selection and the amount of work
they put into their project through the GRIT rubric. I would want to improve my students
overall ability to construct responses in the future, so I might introduce a standard response
template for students to use as success criteria to remember to meet all the areas of the question.
Since my unit materials were structured more as check points, and mini lessons, students saw
them more as resources than assignments. Several students mentioned that they used the lecture
multiple times on different occasions and were looking for different applications of the content
each time. Other students utilities my mini-lectures which were between 3 to 5 minutes on any
requested area. For example, in one class I had several students analyzing social welfare
programs and where the money to fund the programs come from, but they were overwhelmed by
all the resources they were finding. They were able to sign up for a mini-lecture to learn a
more simplified version of the taxation process that allows the federal government to fund
welfare programs, and then were able to connect what their sources were reporting back to the
project and inevitably better able to explain how the U.S. mixed economy operates.
One students interaction that was especially meaningful, was a student who began his
project to analyze the stock market, but became fascinated with Bernie Madoff. His interest in
the market skyrocketed, and he re did his project three times until he was satisfied with his
representation of a mixed economy. While it was wonderful to watch him create, perfect, and
recreate his project, I was most impressed by his presentation. Instead of concentrating on his
recorded lecture, he gave the audience background information on Madoff, and then proceeded
to explain supply and demand entirely through a report of how Madoff hoards hot chocolate and
sells it to other prisoners to make a profit. He was not only able to show how supply and demand
work, but also indicated the incentive, who the producers and consumers were in the situation
and how it connected to the world beyond the prison.
While I did see success with this project, there were groups of students who struggled to
either get started or evaluate sources. Since I had planned with certain students in mind, I created
resources for students who had trouble, most were brainstorm prompts or examples, but for a few
students I needed to offer more individual guidance. I built in personal conferences to the unit so
I could have individual time with each student over the course of the project allowing me to
spend about 10 minutes individually with each student. With these students I had them explain
what they understood so far, and then provided discussion prompts so they could talk themselves
through their projects. One student in particular who is reading recovery had trouble with the
readings, so I helped him find resources and we annotated them together one day during lunch to
help demonstrate how to extract information, and after the first analysis, he was able to move
through his project with very little guidance from me.
Since this was project based, I used low stakes quiz to help students identify and recall
the basics on their selected topic areas. I had a class average of 82% on the quiz the first day
after they watched their flipped classroom video, but that increased to 87% by the final day
before presentations. I think this project was successful in helping students learn better research
methods, how to really evaluate their own work, and how much work they put into a project. I
would strengthen this lesson by providing more time to allow students to explore more and have
more time to create their final representations of their standards.
 Bibliography

Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: the science of

successful learning. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Gonzalez, J. (2017) The Apollo School: What 21st Century Learning Looks Like. Retrieved

March 2, 2017, from https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/apollo-personalized-learning/

Juliani, A. J. (n.d.). Genius Hour Webinar. Retrieved March 01, 2017, from

http://ajjuliani.com/ghwebinar

Wimme, G., & Ward, W. (n.d.). The Apollo Website. Retrieved March 01, 2017, from

http://theapolloschool.weebly.com/