This artifact falls under Domain 1a: Demonstrating Knowledge of Content and Pedagogy. During my field experience, I had the opportunity to teach Modern World History 12, which was an incredible and unique experience. By doing my field experience in the spring, a large amount of these students had been feeling apathetic toward school as graduation approached, especially in a general world history as opposed to honors. By using my extensive background knowledge with Cold War history, I wanted to design a fun lesson that truly emphasized the major themes present during the nuclear arms race. In this simulation activity where students created "bombs" (cutting circle-shaped paper) and "bread" (cutting rectangle-shaped paper), students got to see the enormity of the nuclear arms race, both from a militaristic standpoint as well as an economic one. With every simulation, there runs a risk of losing educational value, but by having a debrief and worksheet to go along with the simulation, I believe the simulation only enhanced instruction and went above and beyond meeting my educational objectives. At the end of my field experience, students responded to my questionnaire by saying that this was by far their favoritel lesson of the year. Using this fun, yet extremely effective pedagogy to enage my students, I clearly demonstrated quite a few of the domains of the Danielson Framework in just one lesson. The attachments below include the lesson plan and lesson materials.
Author:
Garrett Miller
Last modified:
11/24/2015 5:37 PM (EDT)