Evaluation of Instructional Project

School: Redland Middle School Teacher(s): Grade: 7th Young (LMS), Flaherty (LMS Intern), Social Studies teachers

Subject area: African Culture Beginning and ending dates: Wednesday November 13thth and Thursday, November 14, 2013 Objectives (As a result of the lesson(s), what will the students know/be able to do?): Students will conduct research on seen cultural characteristics for an African country (assigned). Students will use an online resource (Culture Grams) to research each cultural characteristic. Students will identify and record a minimum of five seen examples for each characteristic. (Communication, Daily Life, Material Evidence, Traditions and Heritage, Artistic Expression and Groups and Institutions) Students will use note taking skills to identify seen examples on graphic organizer. Summary of project: Students are assigned an African country to research. Students use online resource to research and learn seen cultural characteristics of the people. Students are utilizing note taking skills in documenting information. Students create a postcard utilizing writing skills to summarize note taking. Resources used: Culture Grams World Edition What worked well? Demonstrating how to access the various cultural subject areas within Culture Grams was helpful for the students. Giving them a refresher on note taking was helpful. Walking the room, reminding and assisting students on how to take notes as they investigated each cultural area was also helpful. If you were to teach this unit again, what would you do differently? I would require the postcard (the final project) to be created using technology. The end result would be much more attractive and meaningful to student learning. What evidence do you have that students met the stated objectives? Students completed a graphic organizer for their research and note-taking assignment. This was a graded assignment. (Assessed by LMS Intern) Students wrote a rough draft to combine cultural facts into interesting sentences for the postcard/letter. (This was assessed by the LMS intern.) What is the most important thing that you learned through this experience? Collaboration is more effective when the collaborating teacher is prepared and has completed the pre-classroom assignments prior to lesson in the library media center. Flexibility and knowing all pieces of the project are critical to success.