Consumerism in the 1920’s – Reflection

In some aspects I feel like I completed parts of my goals in this lesson on consumerism in the 1920’s. Going into the lesson, I wanted the students to be able to recognize how the common features and such of advertising that we still see and notice today started in the 1920’s after the first war. I wanted students to recognize how specific elements that commercials had that allowed us to remember them, such as the targeted audience, aspect of focus, and the overall message, still carry over today. I especially wanted them to also notice how the advertising game changed with the inclusion of both TV and radio. I felt like the students in the lesson were able to see that as they were able to connect to commercials from their childhoods that appealed because of these same characteristics. 

         I also feel like the goals weren’t met at the same time because I wasn’t able to be as focused on the specific aspects of consumerism and the specific examples of the characteristics. I also needed to be more organized and give proper preparation time and instructions to be able to get to everything in the lesson and to fully touch the important parts. This is the aspects that didn’t go as well. 

         What I learned that I could do is to be more specific and detailed on what I want to touch in order to better get to the main takeaway and message that I want to convey based on my lesson title. So, in the case of consumerism, my commercial example and what I asked the students to produce didn’t touch directly on specifically consumerism in the 1920’s. As a result, I can pick two or three themes from the era that you wanted to teach about later, maybe the role of women, the culture of youth, how the automobile was transforming America, and show, use, and teach/explain using these examples. I can also have given students the task of bringing in their videos of their commercials so we can be able to get the most out of that aspect of the lesson and to be able to get to the rest of the lesson to ensure its best effect. 

         In terms of my timing, it was kind of off and on, with parts being more on track than other parts. I feel like during the intro discussion of their commercials and their experiences, I was able to foster good discussion and the flow and timing was on track. The timing got a little off when I asked them to send in their own videos to my email, when I wasn’t prepared to do it and it showed when I scrambled to get my email and organize the gathering, opening, and playing of the videos. I feel like the timing and flow and delivery was awkward during the sharing and discussion of the videos. The timing and flow returned during showing the video on the 1920’s and having the discussion afterwards. Overall, even with the timing off, the workflow seemed pretty decent as student’s were on track and we got to the next thing. It just wasn’t great because we didn’t get to the last aspect of the lesson plan.