Tag: Higher Order Thinking

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Class 4: Crafting a Lesson

Crafting a Lesson

This class will begin with a review of the learning activities designed by students in our last assignment. Next we will discuss critical components of a good learning activity.

Assignment 4

Students will develop and deliver a 20-25 min lesson in their assigned class

  • 9/23 – Renee, Maddy, Jacquie, Cody
  • 9/30 – Jose, Jarrett, Casey

Students should also do a blog post that previews the lesson – noting:

  • target audience
  • content (what will be studied)
  • process (what will you do – what will students do)
  • resources for lessons

About the lesson   The lesson should a historical thinking skills lesson. Specific content of lesson is up to you. If you can get the timing right, we can offer you feedback before you use it with your students.

  1. This lesson should be delivered as if we were your class.
  2. Your peers will serve as participant observers noting lesson content, nature of the student task, lesson delivery and student workflow.
  3. Feel free to design a flipped lesson in advance and let the class know of your plans and required viewing.
  4. If you have a significant amount of reading required, send it to us in advance.
  5. After your delivery of the lesson go back and edit your post with synopsis of what you learned from our class feedback.
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Class 2: Three Keys to Student Engagement

Three keys to student engagement

Today’s class will focus on the subject of student engagement. We’ll use a presentation and a few activities to demonstrate how higher order thinking tasks, opportunities for student choice and fostering student reflection can both enhance student engagement and create deeper learning.  Three Keys handout 1.5MB pdf

We will also log into new WordPress accounts and give students the chance to introduce themselves in a visual essay in response to a poem.

Assignment 2

See completed student assignment 2 here

Here’s your chance to demonstrate the role of thinking task, choice and reflection. Read Where I’m From, below and create a blog post that uses words and images to describe “where you’re from.” Don’t feel you have to take the prompt literally – what other descriptors tell us about your roots?

“Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon

I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I’m from the know-it-alls
and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I’m from He restoreth my soul
with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.

I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments–
snapped before I budded —
leaf-fall from the family tree.

Header image credit Adobe Spark