Wilson Tran

November 9, 2017

Professor Striegl

Module 2 Reflection
FOCUS QUESTION 2: How can teachers use their content area to teach key enduring concepts,
reading skills, critical thinking skills, historical thinking skills, and communication skills, such as
writing?

Use evidence from your fieldwork experiences to explain what you learned about the FOCUS
QUESTION in the space provided. Clearly articulate your ideas using college-level writing. Non-
examples can be used to address the FOCUS QUESTION if instances when teachers did NOT do well
helped inform your learning.
The first two teachers that I observed exemplified all of these skills. For Mrs. Stephens in each of her
lesson on States’ rights and the Articles of Confederation. The new way of teaching that was difficult
for the students grasp at first. It was this activity of reciprocal reading. The students are split into groups
of four then each is assigned a task one is of a questioner, a clarifier, a summarizer, and a sourcer. Each
of these tasks help in teaching each of skills above. The reading skill is taught by each of the students
has to follow along in the passage, and then help the summarizer create a summary of the text. Then the
job of the questioner is to question the validity of the text and an overarching question this teaches
critical thinking skills. For instance, by didn’t any of the 13 colonies/states succeed earlier in the union?
The historical thinking skill is taught by the sourcer since it teaches periodization and cause and
consequence. Since the sourcer with the help of the group, has to identify the causes of these states
being adamant towards the federal government and what the outcome was. Lastly, job of the clarifier
helps in communication skills since some of these historical and scholarly terms are new to these
students. The job of the sourcer is to find the meaning of words that the group does not know, this is
through the use of the textbook’s glossary, a dictionary, or their phones to find the meaning. It was
much easier the second time when students discussed the three branches of government. The second
person was Mr. Terranove he did an enjoyable activity that the students were active to do. The activity
is called gallery walk, as for the part of history that they are focusing on was the Progressive Era.
Students are split into groups of five, then they choose from a list of events, historical actors, and work
unions. Then each group use a separate whiteboard to write out the who, what, when, where, and why
and explain each term. The students mainly use communication skill to tell the student assigned to write
to answer the who, what, when, where, and why. The end result is in comparison to the activity jigsaw,
since after these whiteboards are finished students walk around and take notes down on their
worksheets. Then these notes will be a type of study guide for these students for their next test. The
historical thinking skill would be evidence and interpretation since these students did not use textbooks.
Instead, they found information using their Chromebooks then they had to read webpages and interpret
if they could be used or not. The last teacher I observed unfortunately did not possess any of these
skills. Mr. Shadid, after he collected homework, did attendance, and checked on students if they had
questions on the homework. He then did a straight forty minute lecture on American Political culture.
He would ask questions to the class in order to check up on students if they were paying attention.

RUBRIC
A B C D
 Thoroughly answers  Clearly answers  Somewhat addresses  POOR performance
FOCUS FOCUS the FOCUS in some or all of the
QUESTION. QUESTION. QUESTION. following areas:
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  Consistently  Supports some ideas  Limited support of  Answering the
supports ideas with with specific ideas with specific FOCUS
specific evidence evidence from evidence from QUESTION.
from fieldwork. fieldwork. fieldwork.  Clearly
 Articulate and  Clearly written.  Writing not clear communicating.
sophisticated  Hours fully and/or contains  Completing hours,
writing. completed, clearly grammar/usage logging hours,
 Hours fully logged, & verified. mistakes. verifying hours.
completed, clearly  Min of 3 teachers  Hours aren’t fully  Visiting required
logged, & verified. visited. completed, clearly number of teachers.
 Min of 3 teachers  Moderately logged, & verified.  Completing and
visited. complete packet  Possibly fewer than submitting packet
 Complete packet submitted ON- 3 teachers visited. on-time.
submitted ON- TIME or strong  Packet may be
TIME. packet submitted incomplete or late.
late.

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