Appraising, choosing, and modifying tasks/texts for a specific learning goal.
Teachers appraise and modify curriculum materials to determine their appropriateness for helping particular students work toward specific learning goals. This involves considering students’ needs and assessing what questions and ideas particular materials will raise and the ways in which they are likely to challenge students. Teachers choose and modify material accordingly, sometimes deciding to use parts of a text or activity and not others, for example, or to combine material from more than one source (TeachingWorks.org)
Important Note: I know that the Social Studies Standards are currently undergoing an overhaul, but my lesson plans are based off of a combination of old standards and the Common Core based on the requirements of my professors at Oakland University.
One takeaway that I have from student teaching is a proficiency in aligning activities and texts with standards-based learning goals. Before I do anything to plan a lesson, I come up with a unit plan sequence based on standards with an overarching big idea. For each lesson, I assign the standards that are to be covered and then come up with a big idea/essential Question. After I have done all that then I start to look at activities or plans that match my learning objectives. My most recent example of this was during our imperialism unit where I modified a scramble for Africa activity into a whole lesson. I wanted the simulation to be accurate and to depict both the European and the African perspectives of Imperialism. This lesson addressed the central ideas imperialism and the lasting problems of colonization through a case study of Imperialism in Africa.
Once I decided my lesson objectives, I began to search for an activity that could highlight both the perspectives of the European Colonizers and the Africans who were colonized. I found this activity from Boston University about the scramble for Africa. I really liked it, except when I tried it out, it did not prove to be accurate. So I modified the simulation to include actual cut outs of the resources and distributed them accordingly on the map. I also re-did the lengths of string to more accurately represent the earnings of each country. I also changed the instructions to more explicitly state what each country was looking for and the reason why and put them into a Powerpoint so the whole class could observe the instructions in real time. I also added an option for Italy to arm wrestle with Ethiopia. I did not like the vagueness of allowing Italy to "fight" Ethiopia. Plus it allowed us to have a neat conversation right then and there about how strong and independent African kingdoms were prior to colonization. We also talked about how Social Darwinsim played a roll in the way Europeans treated Africans and the underestimation of kingdoms like Ethiopia.
Another part that I added was the Conference of Berlin which dictated how Africa was split up among the European Powers. After allowing the students to make plans, I stopped them and had them interact with a reading on it and put them in that mindset before setting out on the simulation.
After the simulation we looked at the maps and compared the real colony map to the one we had created. We then compared that with maps of linguistic and ethnic borders as well as a map that illustrated conflict around current state borders. We had a discussion about the lasting effects of colonization and I prefaced a recent conflict that was still an effect of colonization - the Rwandan Genocide.
We also related the effects and events of the Berlin Conference to the Open Door policy as a way to compare the experiences of European Imperialism in Asia and Africa.
