What worked today?
- I think most students enjoyed watching CNN Student News (now called CNN10). I show it only once a week at most, and I think it's doing a good job of drawing students into the current events of the world. I hope that they are starting to see connections between the past (what they learn) and the present (what they see and experience).
- I also assigned students to create an advertisement for the "New World," as if they lived in the 1500s. That went mostly well because students were able to use some creativity and not have to do as much writing as they have been doing lately!
What didn't work?
- Though most students are just fine writing a five sentence reflection on today's episode of Student News, some students struggle to listen/watch and write. Perhaps in the future I can model the expectations and give them tools to make it easier for them.
- Man, I just hate given notes-- I only had one slide of notes today, but it was boring. I need to brainstorm some ways to give students information quickly without boring them to death through Power Points.
- Some student just straight up refused to do the New World Advertisement because they "can't draw." Even when given alternate choices they refused to do it. That type of closed mindset makes me pretty sad and is something I'd like to change.
What can I do about it?
- In relation to the boring notes: Possibly I could add more questions into the notes to make them more interactive. And in today's case I probably could have had students brainstorm positive and negative impacts of the Columbian Exchange and simply supplemented that with notes.
- I am going to do a lot more modeling and illustrating of my expectations for student news, etc.
- I need to implement growth mindset more, and help students adopt that mindset more. It's ok to fail, and it's ok not to be "good" at something. But it's not ok to give up.
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