Reflection: (post lesson) To be completed/graded individually.
- How well did your lesson implementation meet your goals and objectives?
- In retrospect, what else might you have done?
- Include comments regarding class’s involvement in discussion including comments, questions, level of interest/engagement.
- How did this assignment promote student learning? How could it be modified?
- Write personal thoughts, feelings, observations, and ideas about the lesson that will inform others who may want to use your lesson plan.
- Address how you contributed to your team’s success including the role(s) you played in the preparation & execution of the lesson.
37 comments:
When completing this project, my group wanted to accomplish a presentation that both held all of the needed information while still staying simple and entertaining. I feel that the lesson implementation of my group met our goals and objectives in two ways. It was educational while still being understandable. These key aspects of our lesson plan made our presentation a positive experience, while still containing all the necessary information needed to meet our goals. Looking back, I may have provided more primary source material of John Constable's than was necessary to show his contributions as an English Romantic artist, but overall I feel that that was only a slight miscalculation in production. I felt that the class was somewhat engaged with our presentation, as we tried to make it as enjoyable as possible. Class discussion was average, as there was a lot of information to present, and not too much time to speculate about his works. The questions asked of our subject were at a minimum, for I believe we covered Constable as a man, and as a Romantic figure quite well. My thoughts on this project are that it is a helpful way to learn a lot about key figures in history; learning about these persons requires not only studying their public history, but their private history as well. This can only be seen through the primary documents used in the project. I feel that a strong knowledge of personal history makes it easier to make connections from an artists’ life to their body of work. This leads to a deeper analysis in the long run, creating a more affective presentation. I feel that my contribution to the group was in good teamwork. My partner and I collaberated openly about what selective information would go on the PowerPoint, what would not etc. In this we worked together to create the most effective visual aid possible for our lesson. I also was responsible personally to type up the lesson plan for myself and my partner, so that we would be prepared in case of a lapse in memory, or a slip of the tongue. I feel that this lesson plan was essential to our group’s success, as it enabled us to make sure we were hitting all the key points of the lecture. Overall I feel that I was a valuable member of the team, especially since we collaborated openly about our study guide for the class as well, although it was majorly my partner’s responsibility. In this I feel that we did equal amounts of research, work, and preparation for the lecture which helped us produce a strong, informational and well-received lecture.
Our group created a lesson plan that taught students about the life and works of Lord Byron. There were a great deal of requirements that needed to be met when working on this project, therefore, each member of our group decided it would be best to divide the information into sections. My particular section focused on Lord Byron’s influences upon society during the romantic era from a historical perspective. Colby decided to focus on his early childhood and the events that influenced his literature. Nico researched more about Byron’s poems and the significance and meaning of each of these poems. Lastly, Emily decided that it would be best for her to investigate Byron’s various affairs and destructive actions. Once we had each researched our particular section, we compiled our information into a detailed and thorough powerpoint that educated the other students about this influential character’s life. Each of us presented our specific sections to the class. We also read a few examples of his works and asked students to work in groups to determine what the author was trying to convey by this poem. However, the students were not as involved as we had anticipated and in retrospect it may have been more helpful for us to include a game of some sort such as a jeopardy game that incorporated various facts that the students had learned throughout the presentation. A game, food, or other more engaging activity would have been helpful for the learning of this information.
It may have been more helpful for us if there was more time allotted for the presentations. In order for our information to be presented in the most accurate and stimulating way it would have been easier to spread our presentation out instead of rushing to cover all of the material. Even though an exciting activity would have been very helpful in audience engagement there was simply not enough time for our group to introduce a game that may have lasted up to fifteen minutes. Therefore, I believe it would be very helpful that an entire class period be given to each group. Another element that should have been included in the assignment is that a handout needs to be given to each table. Many groups did not have a hand out and rushed through their presentations. This made it very difficult for the students to answer the questions that followed the presentations and student involvement to diminish as a result. However, this assignment was very helpful and did give our classes an in depth education on the romantic era while allowing us to do it in an enjoyable and creative way.
I was in the group with Ashwin, where we presented a lesson to the class on Beethoven and Mozart. I felt that we put forth a strong and well inform lesson, that we posed a strong understanding upon are people that we gained through are research as well as gaining a better understanding of the music they wrote. We then continued to convene that information in a well balanced manner in the fifteen minutes that we had the lesson. We tried to divide the time spent on each composer equally as well as give a mix of who they were with what there music was about, while showing the links between them. We also tried to bring the audience into the presentation early on by asking what they know and continuing to keep them interested by asking question and allowing them to listen to some of the pieces written by both of the composers.
However there were problems with the presentation. Although I think that our group did a better job of keeping the audience engaged in the lesson I can’t help but feel that there was more that we could have done to bring their attention on the lesson and help them focus. We could have had a class activity. I am also incredible embarrassed with mixing up the composer of the song, I knew better than that but allowed myself to just read the composer off the screen even though it was wrong. I also think that music that we chose for the presentation wasn’t always the best representation of Mozart and Beethoven. We had problems with getting the music as well as getting it to play in the slide show.
ps i had to make an account again i hate this blog
I felt that this assignment was informative, but not the best use of classroom time. I felt that this was not due to the groups so much as to the high school curriculum. The projects we had focused far to much on the literary aspects of the age and of the people. Currently in American Lit we are going over the Romantic Era, and though there are differences between American and British Romantics, they are similar enough that the two weeks of class time taken up by this assignment was overindulgent.
I would in fact recommend this project but just for the Brit Lit class. The fact that this looked at the literary aspects of a literary era was exactly what (I believe) that class is about. Looking at a particular poet's writing can shed light on stylistic trends of literature of the era. For a history class, especially a survey course, did not need to spend that much time on the Romantics.
I will say that I was very happy with what my group put together. I felt that everyone found out their information and all pulled their weight. I very much enjoyed working with all of them and I hope they enjoyed working with me.
I think we met most of our goals and objectives in the lesson. I think we would have liked to talk more and keep the class engaged more overall. Class participation was rather low in all of the presentations I noticed. There were only a few students who actually seemed to be paying attention as I looked around the room when I personally was presenting and while others were presenting. I think that was a main objective and I wished we could have created more of a participation in the class. Overall I think we did a good job though in highlighting the key points about William Wordsworth and making sure that the students knew the essential information and why he was a key figure in the Romantic Era.
In looking back I think that I would have made sure that the presentation was longer since the time block was not used fully. I also would have had the class be engaged more and promoted discussion within the class and lesson more. Interaction always helps people learn a bit more so it would have been a good idea to keep the class interacting with the lesson instead of them only listening to the presentation and information. It would have also been good to include and activity or more exciting questions that would have kept class discussion going and maybe even brought in a treat for those who made good points about what we asked.
This assignment promoted student learning by forcing the kids to teach the lesson as well as learn from each lesson. I think by having us teach the lesson it helps you to become more educated about what you are learning than if you are the student learning the lesson. I also think it was a lesson in planning and being able to figure out the essential information when discussing a particular topic.
My feelings and thoughts on these presentations is that with 15 minutes it was too long of a time to only talk about the person, yet if we had tried to do an activity like a quiz or game, which I had wanted to do, we would have went over the time allotted. Due to that circumstance it was harder to keep the class engaged. I also felt that since study guides were handed out beforehand, class participation and how much they paid attention diminished since they knew that the information was on the sheet we handed out. The class was doing other work or just daydreaming since they knew they did not necessarily have to pay attention. I think to create class participation we should have done a game or trivia or even had them read one of Wordsworth’s shorter poems and pick out the theme. It would have contributed to the points we were trying to get across as well as keeping them engaged. Questions asked by the class were minimal but the questions asked were all good questions, which I was pleased about.
In working in the pairs for this lesson we mainly split the work up. We both worked on the power point together in the classes given to us in the library. Then to split up the rest of the jobs, I took on the responsibility of writing out our lesson plan and figuring out what we were going to then say and splitting up which slides each of us would cover. I also helped out in making sure the lesson plan covered all essential information so the class would know what was important about William Wordsworth. In addition I made sure the study guide was printed for everyone and that everything was accurate to what we were saying though the study guide was more of my partners responsibility. Overall I think we divided up the work well and managed to get everything done.
After doing my presentation on Richard Wagner, I feel that my overall performance was fairly good. My goal to show people how Wagner influenced today’s culture was executed well, for I believe that my explanation of Wagner’s idea of Gesamtkuntswerk was comprehended by my peers. I also believe that my objective to teach my equals about how Wagner influenced Nazi culture was fulfilled in its entirety. However, like all presentations, this one did have its flaws. My group forgot to print out enough study guides that could be viewed and referred to by the class during our presentation. My explanation of how Wagner’s works were Romantic was not emphasized as much as I wanted it to be. Also, I felt that my group was rushing in order to ensure that we would not forget to mention an important piece of information. Because my group failed to predict how long it would take to go over certain parts of the presentation, we ultimately did not have the time to finish the answering of the essential questions. Because of this, the other students did not have the ability to participate as much, and they cannot be judged harshly if they appeared inactive. It is in my opinion that students found my presentation to be moderately interesting.
It is my overall opinion that this assignment was very educational. By having students work in pairs, it forced them to organize power points, and also to agree on what information to present about their historical character. Additionally, this exercise allowed students to become teachers themselves, which further allowed them to discover academic responsibility. There was one major flaw in this assignment; the strict, fifteen-minute time restraint often resulted in students rushing, which meant that they oftentimes had to condense their presentations. This could be remedied by giving students slightly more time (perhaps another minute). I was rather impressed by certain aspects of my presentation, particularly with my idea to include a duet sung by Tristan and Isolde. If I were to advise another group on what to include in their lesson, I would strongly suggest that they include music from composers of the Romantic era. I also thought that the use of a picture of Wagner in my power point added a level of sophistication to my presentation. This is something that I would also recommend students to do during their seminar.
Because of the great effort I put into my presentation, I believe that I contributed greatly to my team’s success. My information detailing Wagner’s Gesamtkuntswerk and his influence on Nazi Germany added much to the presentation. Also, I felt that I delivered an accurate synopsis of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. I was further responsible for the discovery of a duet between Tristan and Isolde. When it was played to the class, it must have given people at least some idea of how talented Wagner was. If I were to grade myself on this assignment, I would give myself a grade between a B and an A-.
I worked with Adriana on William Wordsworth. Overall, I thought that the presentation was okay, but we definitely could have improved on the presentation as a whole. We got across the points that we wanted to about Wordsworth, but it could have been done in a more interesting fashion. We also gave general information about everything and did not really go in depth like many of the other groups did. That was a flaw that we had in the presentation. I liked that fact that you had the other class analyze a poem, music, or piece of artwork from that artist. I feel that that would have been very beneficial to the presentations. It would have given more of a direction to the presentations and it would have given the class the group’s perspective of that specific piece of work. The class did not seem to get fully involved with the presentations. It seemed like the same people would answer the questions. Most of the questions from the groups, including mine, where not really thought questions. They were just factual questions that if you listened to the presentation, you could have figured out what the answer was. I thought it would have been more interesting if the questions were more thought provoking which might have forced the class to pay more attention. I believe that the idea for the project is a good one. It gives the class the opportunity to learn more about each of the people without just having to read about them in the text book or receive a lecture on them. I also thought that it might be a good idea to have the project worked on individually. If it was an individual project, then there could have been more Romanticism artists presented and it could have given the class a broader outlook on the Romantic Era. Adriana and I split up the work evenly between the two of us. I focused on the PowerPoint and the Study Guide, while she created the lesson plan and the script for the PowerPoint. We would check over each other’s work. We made a good team. I believe that William Wordsworth was an important Romanticism author. He created the modern style of writing for the under classes. He was the embodiment of Romanticism writing and a very important person during this time. Overall, the presentations were very good and I personally learned a lot about the Romanticism period through this exercise.
Due to the fifteen minute time limit, my major goal for the presentation was simply to give the students an idea of what the Brothers Grimm were about. I wanted to make sure that, by the end of the presentation, the students knew exactly who the brothers were, what they were famous for, how they were affected by the events of their time, and how they affected the events of our time. With that in mind, I believe my group as a whole did an excellent job at fulfilling our objectives. Our presentation was straight to the point, yet still allowed for some entertainment value through the story summaries in order to keep the class focused.
In retrospect, I feel that the one major flaw in our presentation was focusing too much on the comparison between the Grimm and Disney versions of Cinderella. If I were to repeat the presentation, I would add another few stories for comparison purposes. Such an addition would give the class a few more examples of the differences between the two, allowing for a deeper understanding of the differences from our culture to theirs. The addition of more story analysis would also raise the entertainment value, making it easier for the class to focus on the presentation and allowing them to absorb more of the material.
Even as it was, it appeared as though the class what quite interested in the overall presentation. Since the presentation was at the beginning of the day on a Monday morning, most of the class was half asleep for the first section of the presentation (which makes sense seeing as that section was full of biographical information that the students really just did not care about, no matter how significant), which is most likely why we had to prod people to answer the first question. However, once we got into the actual story analysis, the class seemed to become much more attentive and interested because it was finally something they could relate to, and multiple hands went up for the second question.
As noted above, the entertainment value of the presentation was the key to information absorption. Unfortunately, many other groups were not as fortunate with their assigned people and ended up preaching to a dead audience about someone they could not relate to and therefore had no interest in. In the future, I would suggest recommending romantic figures whose works can be traced (even abstractly) to modern popular culture. In doing so, the students will be more attentive and learn much more from each presentation.
Overall, I feel that my group’s specific lesson plan (minus the one detail listed above) was the best it could have been with the time restrictions and content necessities. The major strength in the presentation is highlighting aspects of the Brothers Grimm that the students could relate to, calling their attention and allowing them to learn. If anyone else would want to use the lesson plan, the only suggestion I would make is trying to get through the biographical material as quickly, yet efficiently as possible in order to keep the class’s attention. Also, I would recommend adding as many story comparisons as possible to strengthen all the arguments listed within the lesson.
As far as actual contribution, I was responsible for multiple aspects of the presentation. In the preparation, I set up online sharing documents to organize the group and allow them to work as efficiently as possible. We split the material into three main presentation topics that each of us would do, and I not only did my own, but also helped go over other member’s work as well. In the actual presentation, my planned job was to host the questions (in order to keep the class’s attention), talk about the audience that the folk tales were written for, analyze the time period based on the facts presented, and conclude the presentation, summing up all the points together. Unfortunately, some of my slides were accidentally taken during the presentation, leaving me with the last three minutes to present the rest of my material and sum everything up. Even still, I feel like the presentation went very well and all member contributed in a positive manner.
For the Romantic Era project, my group focused on the life and works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In order to be able to present the most information about him in the given time period we decided that it would be best if we each research one aspect that we were going to discusses when we presented the information to the class. The topics that we chose to discuss included his childhood, different poems he wrote, and also connecting it his works to the different events that were taking place during the Romantic Era. I was in charge of finding out information on two different poems that Coleridge wrote, Kubla Khan and The Pains of Sleep. I found background information about the poem in order to be able to connect it to Colerdige’s life, and also made sure that I was able to interpret the poem to present to the class. After everyone in our group found the information that they were supposed to, we put it all together in a power point to show to the class. We made sure that our slides were brief, but also informative and included lots of visuals. In addition to the power point that we created, we also made a handout with what we felt were some of the more important facts that the students should remember about our presentation. While I feel like everyone in my group did a good job of presenting the information, it was hard to keep the class engage in what we were talking about. We tried to make sure that when we were presenting our information we kept it short and to the point, but this appeared not to be effective enough. When we asked questions at the end, a handful of people raised their hands to answer, but the majority of the class seemed to be uninterested. I feel that if we were to get more people engaged in what we were doing we should have made our presentation more interactive. For example we could have made it so if you answered a question about our presentation correctly you received candy, or something to that effect. By doing so we would have been able to hold the attention of our peers better than we did. While I was able to learn a lot about Samuel Taylor Coleridge through my research, I feel like it was not very effective. Instead of going really in-depth in learning about the political and economical aspects of this time period, I felt like this project caused us to focus more on the cultural and literature of this time period. I feel like while this is very important to learn, it might have also been beneficial if we studied other aspects of this time period as well.
After completing my lesson on Johan Gottfried von Herder with Elaine, I can look back and say that we did an effective job in meeting our goals and objectives. Our basic mission was to provide the students with an informative outlook on the life and Romantic impact of Herder while remaining as concise as possible to avoid bogging down the students with useless information about a figure that they most likely had little interest in to begin with. However, we did hope that after our presentation, our fellow classmates would leave with a new knowledge of this important Romantic figure, and an understanding of his role in, and impact on the Romantic era. We also wanted to divide the time pretty evenly between factual information that we were telling the class, and the class’s own thoughts and opinions on Herder, which we did through discussion questions. I strongly believe that we did live up to our goals in retrospect; however improvement could have definitely been made. I believe that on my part I could have been more confident with my understanding of Herder when discussing one of his major works, and I also think that it might have been beneficial for us to have analyzed another one of Herder’s major works in order to show a broader range of his key ideals. Overall however, I still think that even without doing so, our presentation was effective and the class seemed to receive it pretty well. Much of the class actively participated in our discussion questions that we provided, with well formed answers and statements that displayed that they had gotten something out of our presentation. I’m sure that they will not go to the library and check out a book about Johan Herder, but I do think that they learned a lot which is what my partner and I wanted.
This assignment promoted student learning because it was in a sense students teaching students, which often allows the information to be more easily understood due to common bonds in age, language, culture, etc… I believe that the assignment was effective and does not need any modifications, although the encouragement of more audience participation could have enhanced the experience. In regards to the preparation and execution of our lesson I believe that both Elaine and I did a good job and we both worked diligently and effectively to get done what was needed. My contributions included helping format the lesson plan, putting together the visual poster, making the bibliography of our sources, and analyzing one of Herder’s major works. During the presentation itself (due to a dumb mistake on my part) I was limited to presenting the major work and leading the discussion questions which we worked on collectively. Overall, I think that this was a well-designed assignment which was a breath of fresh air, and I believe that my partner and I did a great job in all aspects of it.
Andras
I am of the opinion that our lesson plan did succeed in meeting most of our priorities. We provided a reasonably thorough chronology/biography of the lives of the Grimm Brothers and also presented a solid illustration of the themes and principles underlying the works of the Grimm Brothers through comparing their rendition of one of the more popular of fairy tales with those of other compilers and revisers, especially Disney's most modern version. However, I feel that we focused overly much on Cinderella, and that we could have been better served through more concise comparisons of multiple works. Not only would this have more abundantly demonstrated the influence and diversity of the Grimm Brother's works (as many of the fairy tales they adopted remain popular and prevalent to this day, often as a result of their efforts), but it also would have provided a more rigorous and precise means of evaluating and communicating the fundamental beliefs and goals of the Grimm Brothers with respect to their works. After all, the analysis of three or four tales would be much more convincing than that of one story. In order to attain this, it might have been better to also remove a bit more from the biographical information, freeing up sufficient time for multiple shorter analyses. This is not to mention that a more diverse set of analyses would have likely proved more engaging to the class- a single comparison of different versions of a classical fairy tale can only be expected to significantly hold the attention of a classroom of High-schoolers for so long, after all, and a greater selection would have enabled for more changes of pace and the introduction of more interesting and morbid tidbits with which to liven up the lesson. However, class participation was still reasonably high for our questions, with several individuals responding quite swiftly and significantly (that is to say, without mere rote regurgitation of previously presented content) to the question posed as part of my part of the lesson (the Cinderella comparison/analysis), as well as those posed by Dan. Most of the other presentations experienced comparable, and in a few cases inferior, results, and thus I'd count what we managed to be a decent success. Given the timeframe, however, it was only possible to integrate a fairly limited number of questions (and accommodate for only four or five responses) while retaining time for the comparisons necessary to establish them. While the emphasis of the project on developing several class questions was certainly of value in promoting analysis on the part of both those composing the question and those responding to them, the fact that so many found much of the subject matter dry (describing the general contents of the presentation) and the fact that relatively little time was available to meditate thoroughly on a given question did significantly limit the degree to which the presentations served to enlighten the intended audience, I feel. It's possible that establishing quotas for questions meaningfully answered for each student in the audience might help to encourage proper investment of attention and significant contemplation of the subject matter with respect to the audience. Further de-emphasization of the biographical portion of the presentation might also be of use. Additionally, the fact that the presentations themselves followed so shortly in the wake of our term paper and were in close proximity to the exceedingly hectic conclusion of the quarter severely limited the time and energy that I was capable of devoting to the project. While I do feel that the presentation adequately accomplished its goals and hopefully provided some degree of illumination on the Grimm Brothers and their works (and their evolution), I feel that the presentation could have been much more effective in terms of scope and efficiency were it situated in a better position in the year. Providing a greater range of topics (i.e., wars, politicians, revolutions, etc. of the period) and greater student choice in the matter might also have helped to stimulate both the presenters and the audience. The former could select a topic that more readily appealed to their interests (rather than being randomly assigned a topic within a relatively narrow range of subject matter), and the latter would be exposed to a wider range of content, both mitigating ennui as the presentations proceeded and also increasing the likelihood of enthusiastic or deep participation (as, again, the likelihood of encountering a truly fascinating subject would increase with a wider range of topics). While this would transform the project into something beyond a specifically Romantic-Era presentation, I believe that it might serve to make the activity significantly more worthwhile. The possibility of independently selecting a topic of interest, or, indeed, forcing every group to compose a unique topic to compose a lesson on within a given range of dates might also be something to investigate.
My role in the group was solely to compare a fairy tale or two adapted by the Grimm brothers to its more modern incarnations. This was done by reading the original versions online and contrasting them with other available sources, primarily the Disney versions. However, I experienced some difficulty in actually finding complete copies of the more modern works that I could readily compare (which, in addition to time and space constraints, was why we ended up focusing on Cinderella), which did serve to impede progress on the project for a time. I was also responsible for composing and presenting the associated comparison slides and the analysis, which I presented (although as Dan was responsible for fabricating the questions, I did inadvertently present one of his slides). As I composed a large portion of the presentation and participated significantly in the discussion associated with my portion of the presentation, I feel that my contributions were significant and worthwhile.
For our presentation, we did Richard Wagner. After doing research, I decided to talk about his impact on the Romantic era by focusing on his immediate and longterm impacts. I talked a little bit about how he had an impact on other artists of the time in the field of composing operas, but I focused more about his long-term effect, discussing his influence on the Nazi party and racial struggles over religion decades later. I feel like I met my goals pretty well, as I covered his long-term impact on anti-Semitism and his influence on Hitler in good detail and taught the class plenty of info they may not have previously known. I also was able to go into his direct effect on the Romantic era, but I could have done more with that. I did not go into it to the greatest detail, which is something I could have improved. Also, I attempted to keep the class engaged, even adding some fun beginning and ending movie clip art, but I don't think our topic was sufficiently interesting enough for much of the class. I also talked about one of Wagner's main works, as did Mike, and was able to really show what I was trying to say using it as an example. However, I think that we could have improved it by talking about additional works if we had had more time, but I think it worked out OK. As for class involvement, the class can't really be judged on the discussion since we kind of ran out of time, but I thought people participated and were attentive. It also struck me that several people asked questions as well, also reflecting class involvement, which was surprising since Wagner is admittedly not the most interesting topic. I thought this exercise helped promote student learning by forcing each of us to research and learn all about a prominent figure of this period, thus teaching us more than we would have absorbed if it were taught via class lecture or assigned reading. One of the best ways to know if you understand something is to see if you can teach it, and I feel as though i got a much greater understanding of my topic by teaching it. However, it could be changed by fixing the problem with timing. My suggestion is that instead of trying to fit lesson and discussion into 15 minutes, we could do the lesson for 15 minutes and have the discussion separately timed, perhaps for 5 minutes or so. A positive in the presentations were the handing out of the study guides, I thought. This allowed us to focus on listening to and absorbing what the speaker had to say, instead of taking notes at the same time, and also, because the presenters made up the outlines, they were outlined the way the presenters felt they should be, with all the important ideas. If we took notes on our own, not knowing as much about the topics, we might neglect important ideas and write down others that may not be so important, so it was nice to get notes outlined as concisely and accurately as possible. Finally, I felt like I contributed a lot to my group. I wrote a lot of the powerpoint-at least half, if not more-and helped form the final essential questions. I also handled much of the presentation. I also felt that it enhanced our presentation that the two of us came up with the idea together to play a sample of Wagner's music. Nevertheless, there were still some things I could have improved on. For starters, I could have planned better and had enough printer paper to print all the copies I needed to hand out, so the class could have had the study guide during the presentation. Due to this oversight, even though I remembered the study guide, the class would not have had to wait a day for them. I also think we could have planned out our presentation better so we could manage our time better and have the whole discussion. We could also have planned out better about who would do which slides, and communicated better, because that was a minor issue. All in all, though, I was pleased with how it turned out.
I was very satisfied with my group's presentation. We wanted to show how Constable's unique style of landscape painting was influential to the romantic era. We were able to accomplish this through an effective lesson plan, which included analyses of his major works and a brief, effective description of his life and its influence on his works. I believe we could have improved on class participation which would have made our presentation more effective. Since our romantic figure was a painter, I believe it kept the class more focused because we analyzed actual artwork which definitely helped. An exercise such as this does help with overall understanding of the era, because we not only researched our own figure, but got to see other figures as presented by other students, which gives us a different point of view on the era. In some cases, it might have helped to have more time to present, as each group can go further in depth on their romantic era figure. I thought that the lesson was successful overall, especially through providing study guides to each student. I believe that my partner and I worked very well together. We each provided to the power point equally, and I worked on the study guide while Erin completed our lesson plan. I do believe Erin was a great contribution, as her art knowledge and work ethic brought us to where we were. Our ability to work well together was vital to the success of our presentation, and I was very pleased with the end result.
In our group’s presentation, I played a major role in doing research and writing Felicia Hemans’ biography. I also helped to put together a lot of the presentation and lesson plan, analyze Hemans’ work, present the lesson, and conduct class discussion.
Our group’s lesson implementation was somewhat successful in meeting our goals and objectives. Our goals were to teach students about the Romantic poet Felicia Hemans, to introduce students to Felicia Hemans’ work, and to have students draw connections between Hemans’ work and life and the time period. Our objectives were to familiarize students with Hemans’ life by reading a short biography, familiarize students with her work by reading and analyzing her poems, and to have students connect Hemans’ work to her life and the time period through class discussion. Though I think students learned about Felicia Hemans from our presentation, I do not think that we included quite enough about the history surrounding the Romantic Era. I also do not think that we did quite enough to hold students’ attention. Many people weren’t very engaged in the class discussion. There weren’t many questions, and the class was reluctant to answer questions we posed them.
In light of these problems, in retrospect we probably should have included a broader section in our presentation about the history of the Romantic Era. We also probably should have included a few more engaging activities in our lesson plan, something that would have been a bit more interesting to high school students than a class discussion and a worksheet on which to take notes. Perhaps a worksheet that included a fun exercise that people could work on in groups would have been more effective.
In general, I thought the lesson was slightly on the dry side, and didn’t include quite enough information regarding the actual history of the Romantic Era. If someone else were to use this lesson plan, I would recommend that they supplement it with additional information on the Romantic Era, and with activities that would lead to more engaging class discussion.
This assignment promoted student learning by forcing students to teach material to one another. In this way, we learned the material ourselves and were taught additional material by our peers. I think, however, the activity could be improved by having the students work in smaller groups – students in larger groups don’t individually learn as much material, and it is often easier for students to cooperate and coordinate when in smaller groups. I also think that it would be better if the activity was confined to one subject – since the British Literature class was involved, I think there was too much emphasis on the actual literature and not enough on the history. Also, when juniors and seniors work together, the juniors sometimes end up taking on most of the work – the senior British Literature didn’t always participate as much as could have been hoped.
In our group’s project, our main objective was to be able to convey how the life and works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge to the class and show how they reflected on the time period and Romanticism. In order to divide up the work, I was assigned to research on Coleridge’s biography while the other members of our group focused on his poems, its analysis, and finally his connection to Romanticism. In my research of Coleridge’s life, I tried to look at events that made important impacts on Coleridge stylistically and artistically. For example, a major part of his romantic progressivism came from his innovation in terms of using romantic themes of individualism and nature. This really came as a result of his friendship with William Wordsworth, who wrote Lyrical Ballads with Coleridge. Another great factor in his style was his opium addiction. Many of his works exhibit mysticism and a great a amount of imagination, which came from being high on opium for the majority of his latter life. Though the information was a lot, I tried to make the presentation brief and included a lot of pictures in the power point. While I thought my group and I were able to effectively convey what we wanted to convey to the class, it was hard to keep the class engaged particularly because we were the first group to go, and there was not enough class participation in our presentation. A major part that was lacking was during the reading and analysis of the poems. I think it would have been more engaging for everyone to read the poems together and then have the class analyze instead of just our group analyzing the poem. .However, I do not think this would have changed the amount of class interest dramatically because frankly, poems are just not as exciting to students as they are to adults. Because our presentation was the last half hour of the week and day, many were just eager to leave instead of hearing about a person long dead and his contributions in romantic poetry.
While I thought the concept of this project was good, the implementation of this project was not easy. Particularly because the class combined was so big, and not many people were acquainted with each other, I felt like this hindered the productivity of the many sessions we had to work on this project. Also, for me as an European History student, this project did not mean much at all. The only real historical content that came from this project was the reflections on romanticism, which was the same for basically all the poets anyways. Because poetry is such a limited part of Romanticism, it did not hold as much interest to me as a history student than it would have been to a British Literature student, who basically has to analyze the poems anyways. Also, the limited poets to choose from was a bit frustrating because I think it would have been better if we could have had the chance to choose from writers, playwrights, musicians, and other forms of artists so that there would have been a larger variety of the subjects being covered, and it would be not only more interesting for the audience, but also the presenters.
While presenting our lesson on Mary Shelley, my group wanted to give the students a quality lesson while still keeping them from being bored. To me, we were successful in this sense because we presented our topic so that the students would be listening intently and taking in the information that we were giving them. To better our presentation, we could have focus more on her works and gone into more detail. With her major work, Frankenstein, being quite popular, it was important to deeply analyze it. In retrospect, I feel that I should have had an even better understanding of it than I had when I was presenting.
The class was quite involved in the presentation. At the end of our slide show, Luke and myself asked some critical thinking questions that were immediately answered by multiple classmates, showing to us that they were paying attention and thoroughly comprehended our lesson. I think that this project is great for promoting student learning. Each group obtains an extensive knowledge of their own writer, author, or composer while other students share their own knowledge about others with the class.
My role of the presentation entailed mostly the biography and the to analyze Frankenstein, though both Luke and I both worked on the slide show and study guide and helped each other in our different aspects of the presentation. I feel that we worked well cooperatively in order to successfully present our topic.
The lesson my group organized was on Lord Byron and was primarily lecture based. We did give out a handout with essential information and a PowerPoint accompanied our lesson. Specifically in the lesson we looked at Byron’s life and poetry and looked for the connections in both that dealt with the overall Romantic Era. We also tried doing a bit of a class discussion about his poetry after presenting the information and got some feedback on what the class thought about Byron’s poetry. The goals of our lesson plan was not only to teach people about Byron’s life and poetry but to give them an idea about how he connected to Romantic era as whole and I think we did that well in our lesson. However, while I feel we may have covered our objectives and reach the goals of our lesson, I still think the group and I could have done something to engage the class more or at least have gotten more people interested. When doing the lecture portion of the projects many other groups had games or food to keep the people involved and interested in the presentations, which were some great ideas I really wish we had thought of. There seemed to be a decent amount of interest about the subject we were teaching so that was nice to see but there was not a lot of total participation either. The discussion portion of the project actually went better than expected and we did get more participation than I expected, but it still was not a large amount. When we got the discussion it usually ended up being from the same people, which wasn’t a bad thing since they had interesting things to say about the poems but it was not like we had the entire class buzzing. The class also was not exactly question filled about Byron and we only happened to get one or two questions. If I could do the project again I would definitely try to think of a way to get people involved more in discussion and in the lesson overall. Personally I would suggest having a longer time for the presentations because while the groups only researched one person it is still very difficult to cover the life and important works of any of the chosen people in such a limited amount of time. With Byron as an example, the man had a short but crazy life which was interesting to talk about but we had to sum it up really quickly so we had time to do the poem analysis and the discussion period. Even then the depth of the poetry couldn’t be explored as much since the essential ideas needed to be addressed before time ran out. It was not like my group and I were rushing to get through the presentation but there was a good amount of information we had to skip over in so we could take the time to explain the necessary information. The increased amount of time would also allow for more creativity in the lesson plans which might in turn increase audience participation. Overall though I really did like how the project worked and I learned a lot about specific poets that I might never have gone so in depth about before. Exploring the Romantic era using important figures to connect to the overall view of the era was interesting and helps in putting the generalizations we learned in class into perspective. I think the project has a lot of potential and would be good for both classes to do again but it might be better if the classes worked separately rather than together so the overall goals would not have to be so broad. This would also allow for a view of other Romantic figures who were not poets, like how the other class worked it. In my group we worked well together and it all came together great. What we did was divide up the work so I looked at Byron’s poetry and its connections to the era as a whole, Kristina looked up Byron’s historical influences to the era and its writing, Emily looked at the many controversies that surrounded Byron and their effect on his poetry, and Colby looked up his childhood and other aspects of his life that were historically important to the poetry. With the time allotted in class we were able to work together and form all this information into the project so people saw the connections that existed throughout his life, his poetry and the era. In all I am happy with how it all turned out and would suggest doing the projects in future classes just with a little more tweaking and structure.
For the Romantic Era lesson plan activity, our group discussed and taught the works for Robert Burns. Our group’s goal was to present the major works of Burns in a way that it did not bore the audience, nor confuse them. We wanted to present the information in a simple way, taking minimal time, and try to meet the needs of all kinds of learners, be it visual, auditory, or hands on. I believe we met our goal because we presented the four major works of Burns and related it to history through the Romantic Era.
We used a power point, music, and butter cookies to engage the class, by showing his works and history on the power point, used music to bring “Auld Lange Syne” to life, and presented butter cookies to show his Scottish heritage. These techniques reached out to all kinds of learners, but I feel did not reach our audience. I feel this way because each presentation was the same setup and revealed the same information. Each group had a Romantic Era poet and had to relate it to history and literature. There weren’t any variations and each seemed to run into each other. Therefore, I was bored watching the presentations, not because it was a bad project, it was just repetitive. Therefore, I feel the audience was bored because of the lack of eye contact and participation, regardless of the “fun activities” presented. I feel that this project wasn’t a waste of time, but didn’t connect in my brain to AP European history; I feel it was more of a lit project. I think valuable class time was lost and I wouldn’t recommend this project again.
My part of the project was to analyze some of Robert Burns’ most important works. This was more of a lit part of the project and did not help me learn more about the Romantic Era; I learned more by reading the text book. I read and taught the style of Burns’ poetry with some historical references. The historical part of our lesson was small, therefore if another group was to use our plans, I would advise them to span out on history and draw more of a focus on it. I would also tell them to engage the audience more through a different media and try to diversify from the other groups. I do feel our group did a stellar job and we all worked hard together to create a clearer picture on Robert Burns’ life and works. We completed the tasks and not one person did the bulk of the work, we were a team.
Throughout the implementation of this project, our group’s goals and objectives were; to come to a thorough understanding of the life and works of William Wordsworth, to make perceptive connections between the Romantic era and Wordsworth’s life, to make a strong analysis of Wordsworth’s poems, and to lead the rest of class in applying what they would learn into our crossword puzzle and in class discussion. Under the given circumstances, I think our group did a fine job in implementing these objectives. Through extensive research across the board, our group as a whole came to a thorough understanding of both William Wordsworth’s life and the history surrounding the period. With this history and our analysis of William Wordsworth’s poems, we were then able to make many connections between the Romantic era and Wordsworth’s life. In the end, though our discussion fell through, our crossword puzzle proved to be a success.
In retrospect, improvements could have been made in communicating more effectively within our group, in placing more emphasis on the discussion aspect of our project, and through allotting time to run through our presentation. Throughout the beginning stages of the project, communication was not a problem. Our tasks were split up evenly and care was given in helping each member head off in the right direction. As time passed however, communication fell through. Going into our final presentation, many of our group members were unaware of what other members had researched and were going to say. An increase in general communication would have added greatly in the overall fluidity of the presentation. In addition to communicating more effectively, our group should also have placed more emphasis on the discussion aspect of the project. The vast majority of our presentation other than the crossword puzzle was lecture, leaving little time for discussion or interaction with the other students. This was a definite weakness in that though engagement and understanding was evident through the correction of the crossword possible, little engagement was shown otherwise. If more effort was placed in making our presentation more interesting and interactive, our presentation would have been infinitely better. Another change our group would have benefited from is practicing our presentation. Many of the members of our group scrambled to pull things together on our final days together, rather than getting things done beforehand so as to leave time to run through our project. As is very often the case, practice would have smoothed out rough edgesand brought more fluency to our final presentation.
Overall, the main weakness of our lesson was the lack of interaction and discussion. If our lesson plan were to be implemented again, additional emphasis should be made in engaging the students in the lesson and having open discussion with them. By refocusing the emphasis of the lesson on interaction with the students and spending time running through the final presentation, our project could have improved greatly.
Throughout this project, my function was to research the Romantic era as a whole, make connections between William Wordsworth’s life and the era, create the lesson plan, and aid in putting together the PowerPoint presentation. Overall, I believe there was a fairly equal distribution of labor and that every one of our members pulled their weight. Though at times frustrating, I very much enjoyed this project.
Our assignment was to learn about a Romantic Era figure and present information about their works and impact to the class. This lesson helped me to learn a lot about German philosopher Johann Gottfried Von Herder, and other Romantic figures presented by the rest of the class. Looking back upon the assignment, I believe Joe and I effectively presented the lesson. A strong point in our project was class discussion and class participation. Our discussion questions seemed effective and interesting to the class. It seemed evident through the well-informed yet opinionated responses of our peers that they had understood our presentation. Our class discussion time helped to show opposing opinions within the class, thus deepened everyone’s understanding and enhanced our overall presentation. This assignment effectively promoted learning because it was really necessary to not just know basic facts to present, but to actually understand the information deeply enough to convey it to other people. The actual lesson plan was a little bit less useful than I had hoped; I seemed to find myself relying more upon the handout then the lesson plan that was made.
Improvements that could be made to our presentation could have been to organize our information into a power point instead of a timeline. Although the timeline helped me to present I don’t feel like it was very effective in helping the class retain information. Also, we had written up a paragraph analyzing the major work. Although it contained a lot of useful information, it was a bit difficult to present clearly. I definitely think and Joe and I split the preparation for this project evenly. We contributed equally to the research and construction of the timeline. Overall, I believe our presentation effectively conveyed information about our Romantic Era figure.
As far as the general assignment goes, I think this was a pretty productive project. I learned a lot about specific figures during the Romantic Era yet they came from a wide variety of backgrounds including artists, composers, philosophers, and authors. This variety made the presentations more able to hold my attention. The other groups also did a great job.
Our lesson should implement our goals and objectives successfully. It will cover the history of both artists and their legacies in today’s world. As we have not presented yet, I really feel that there is nothing our presentation is missing nor can I comment on audience feedback which I assume will be upbeat and involved. Personally, this presentation was meant to be given with enthusiasm and little bit of humor to engage the audience. Background knowledge of the subject’s is essential in creating the environment necessary to purvey the information.
My contribution to my team’s success is my animosity, charisma, and my half of the research. My research will provide information on one of the artists and my charisma and animosity will keep our audience engaged and semi-interested in what we have to say. Hopefully, we will have positive audience response.
Mike’s and my presentation on Mary Shelley, the influential romantic writer, for the most part met our predetermined goals and objectives. We set out to give an informative yet interesting presentation on a very important person in the Romantic Era. Our overall objective was to teach our fellow students about Mary Shelley’s life, her works, and how those works were influential and important to the Romantic Era. We also wanted to show Shelley’s lasting impact and how her writings were still important to historians who looked back at romanticism today. I think we did this successfully because we put forth this information about Shelley in an organized manner that could easily be absorbed by viewers of our presentation. To ensure class attentiveness and participation we created questions for the class to answer throughout the presentation that were thought provoking and involved thinking, not just restating things that we had said previously. I know that this was effective because numerous people answered our questions fully. Also, our questions gave way to discussion, because there was not one specific answer to them, and therefore we had many different answers to our questions. For example, we asked why were Marry Shelley’s other works generally overlooked during the time period. We had several different answers to this question. The basis of her other stories were simply not as appealing as Frankenstein, her major work. Another response we got was that people failed to see the political and ideological meanings of her other stories during the time period. This variety of answers attests to the success of our presentation. One aspect of our presentation that I would like to improve when I look back at it is to maybe add another visual aid of some sort. This would enhance our presentation even more add attract more attentiveness out of listeners, even though it was apparent that we had attention of most students.
I think this assignment did in fact promote student learning. It was a refreshing assignment and an alternate way to learn about topics. This is because instead of the teacher regurgitating information back to students, students were able to go into depth about one important person of the era and then could learn about other important figures via other classmates, which was a good method of student learning. I think what is important to take away from not only our lesson, but everyone’s, is too not get bogged down with dates our biographical information about the romanticism figures, but to see the overall themes in their work and their contributions to the period. That way one can make connections and compare and contrast these figures effectively. I believe Mike and I did a fairly good job in distributing the work equally amongst ourselves to produce a good presentation. I was in charge of informing the class about Mary Shelley’s other works and leading the class into discussions from our questions. So I had to research Shelley’s lesser known writings and share there impact on Romanticism and I also had to look at our presentation as a whole and come up with though provoking questions for the class to discuss, which I believe I did well and was vital to our presentation. Also, Mike effectively did his role in researching biographical information on Mary Shelley and informing the class about Frankenstein. All of this contributed to a presentation that students could take knowledge and information out of, and apply it to there knowledge of the era.
In my honest opinion I believe that the Romantic Era Project was boring. This might be attributed to the fact that my group had one of the lesser-known and less popular poets. I just felt that in general the project did not accomplish what it was meant to, the presentations were uneventful, plain, unimaginative and flat out boring. I’m sorry Mr. Kirby but I have to tell you. These presentations, albeit very well researched and organized, were very boring and because of that very, not very educational. I know that personally I had a hard time paying attention, and I know that a large majority of our class had a hard time as well. I feel that if the presentations were allowed to be more creative and less focused towards the idea of a “lesson plan” then the projects would be much more interesting and kids would retain more of that information.
If the projects were not limited to creating a lesson plan to teach the class then students would be able to do different things and therefore make the presentations more intriguing. All of the presentations that people made were very well researched and very educational but almost to the point where it became overwhelming and redundant. The projects did accomplish the goals that they set out to do, inform us of the Romantic Era, Romantic poets and poetry; but I feel that it was done in a very uninteresting and tedious manner. Our group did Charlotte Turner Smith, like the rest of the groups I feel as if our presentation was well-researched and very well put together. As a group member I felt that all of our members worked well together and did everything equally.
So as a whole I feel that these projects should be “spiced up a little bit.” The way we did them this year was much too boring for my liking. I feel that if we were allowed to be more creative and deviate from the lesson plan then more interesting projects would come.
I feel that Matt and I did a good job in meeting our goals and objectives on our presentation on Lord Byron. Through our presentation we generalized the information that we found in our research and made sure we focused only on the most important aspects of Lord Byron and his works. Our presentation was informative as well as applicable in the aspect that we related the work of Lord Byron to modern day examples. We also meet our goal of answering our essential questions shown at the beginning of our presentation throughout the entire power point and lectures. Something that we could have improved on would have been to engage the audience more and to have more involvement in our presentation. In retrospect we also could have added more about his relationships with other Romantic writers such as Mary Shelley, for these also had a major impact on his writings and poetry. This assignment definitely helped me to learn more about Romanticism as a whole. Primarily it made me focus more on the Romantic writing and poetry due to the person we were assigned to present about. To make this assignment promote student learning more one would have to engage the audience a lot in order for them to attain more knowledge. I feel that these power point presentations get monotonous after the first couple of groups go. Many people in the class start to zone out and not focus on the presentation as much and by the time questions are asked at the end of the lecture there is not much involvement from the class. Matt and I equally distributed the work load for this presentation. Neither of us had a more significant role than the other. My main focus in the presentation was to discuss Lord Byron's major contribution to literature, the Byronic Hero, as well as discussing his major work Don Juan and the overview of the entire presentation. I also created the handout passed out in class and the lesson plan format. Overall I view our lesson as successful and beneficial to the class's knowledge about the British Romantic poet Lord Byron.
Though my group has not yet presented I am confident that our presentation will meet our goals and objectives. I hope to receive positive feedback from the rest of the class and active involvement and participation in our questions and comments. My partner and I have developed a thorough understanding of Theodore Gericault and Eugene Delacroix and we hope to convey an equal understanding to the class. We plan to make our presentation enthusiastic in order to engage the class but also informative so that each student has a comprehensive understanding of the artists. This project is meant to promote student learning because of the active participation that each student is required to serve yet I found that students relied solely on the study guide that each group handed out and when it came to the actual group presentations the students would zone out. My partner and I hope to make our presentation entertaining enough to keep students attracted the entire presentation. My partner and I contributed equally to this project by each taking one of our two assigned artists. I feel that our presentation will go very well and it will be a very effective learning strategy for almost all students.
My group was assigned the Romantic poet Felicia Hemans. I played an active role in finding and analyzing several different works of Felicia Hemans and contributing to the creation of the lesson plan and handouts. Through our our lesson plan, we aimed to teach students about the Hemans, to introduce students to her work, and to have students draw connections between her poetry and both her life and the time period. Our objectives were to teach students about Felicia Hemans’s life by reading a short biography, teach them about her poetry by reading and analyzing two poems, and make connections between Hemans’s poetry to her life, the time period, and the Romantic movement. Overall, I think our group did a good job meeting these goals and objectives, but there were improvements that could have been made.
Although some of the class’s distractions can be attributed to a last period class, in retrospect we could have constructed a more interesting and engaging lesson plan. Our lesson was informative on the life and work of Felicia Hemans as an individual, but I do not think it provided enough general information on the Romantic Era. This information about Romanticism could connect all of the varied works to the history of the Romantic Era. Although we did have discussions for class participation, most people did not participate actively. Instead, we could have created a hands-on activity or game to make the lesson more enjoyable and more interactive.
This was the first time we have ever done a project like this, and I do think the classes benefited from the experience. Collaboration is important and the blending of literary and historical elements of the Romantic Era was particularly valuable, even though it was difficult at times to find a balance between the two subjects.
Our task was to research a key figure from the romantic era and teach the class. We had to present their contribution and their important to the era. This assignment helped me to learn a great deal about the Spanish painter Fracncisco de Goya. Not only did this lesson help me learn about my figure but also helped me to learn about many others from the class. I believe Erica and I presented the material effectively and the most important aspect was the explanation of the paintings, the class seemed very intrigued and curious. I think the most important part of this project was to understand the facts and the information, rather than just memorizing the facts. One of the things I liked the best about our presentation was the way we did our power point. It helped us to be organized and present the information in order. One of the drawbacks of our presentation was that our lesson plan could have been better, we did not write a thorough plan. I think Erica and I both worked and contributed to this project equally, and split the work as well. In my opinion this was a very effective way of learning about the Romantic era and key figures because it helped us to pay attention since our peers were the one teaching the class. There was a lot of variation in everyone’s presentation which helped to hold the class’s attention, therefore I think this way of learning was effective and fun at the same time.
Overall I think our group did a very good job of following the lesson plan we created, dividing up the work fairly evenly and had enough information and analysis of the Brother’s Grimm. At first I expected to not have enough information to fill the 15 minutes for the presentation, but then as we started researching and putting our project together, we actually had to cut down on a lot of the information so that we wouldn’t go over time. This was difficult because there was a lot we could have talked about, but it also probably helped us to get rid of extra information that wasn’t needed to make our point.
The class seemed to be very attentive throughout the presentation and a lot of people raised their hands during the discussions. This is probably mostly because of our topic being interesting and something almost everyone in the class could relate to. If we could do the project again or change something about it, I think it would have been better to have a longer discussion and less background information about our characters, because it felt like we were cutting the discussions short for the sake of time.
As with most projects, I felt like I learned a lot from researching and presenting, more so than I would have from reading the information from a text book. Doing this project allowed our group to not only research the background information on the Grimm Brothers, but to really look at their works and how they have changed over the past centuries into the stories we know today. I found this very interesting looking at the original stories and how different they were originally. I also learned a lot about the time period in which the stories were written, and how much the influenced the Grimm Brother’s works. I was able to look at a lot of the styles evolving during the Romantic Era, and other major events of the time, which clearly had an impact on the writings of the Grimm Brothers and other authors similar to them.
As I said before, I think if other groups in the future research the Grimm Brothers for this presentation, it would be better to have a brief background information section, and more analysis on their works and discussion. That was the portion of the presentation I felt the class and my group got the most out of.
As a group, I think we worked very well together. Each of us contributed an equal amount of work and helped each other revise information and improve the overall presentation. Overall, I felt this was a very fun and interesting project to do, maybe because our group got such interesting historical figures, but I definitely learned a lot about them and other events and figures of the time as well.
The whole objective of this project was to research the Romantic era and then educate the class about our poet. I do feel that my group did. We made sure to learn more about our poet by looking at his life background and his influences. We made a power point presentation to present our findings to the class.
I think, if we had more time, we would have practiced presenting as a group. It's a bit disorienting to stand in front of juniors and seniors and having to present something to all of them. We could have worked more on the flow of our presentation because we pretty much didn't have time to practice that together. The presentation could have been more fluent and concrete.
The class paid attention at frist, but after awhile, that waned a bit. Poems may not be the type of thing to keep the students' attentions. But we were pleased to find that they did actively participate in the ending activity. We passed out a card with a fact of Percy Bysshe's life on it and the person who received the card would have to find another card that corresponded with theirs. In order fromt the class to do this activity, they had to pay attention to our presentation, and when they accomplished, my group knew that the class had listened to us during our presentation.
This projected student learning by proving that students don't always have to be taught by teachers. Learning can be independent, but it just takes a lot of work. Also, it's important to search through different sources to get accurate information. My group used a lot of books as sources and also used the internet too.
The group started researching by looking at Percy Bysshe Shelley's works. Then we realized as a group that we had no clue as to what our poet was saying. We couldn't emotionally or intellectually connect with his works. So we started from the beginning and looked at his life. We made sure to pay attention to how he grew up and what his greatest influences were. My group learned that Shelley was expelled from college at one point because he had published, with a friend, a paper saying that atheism was necessary. The college didn't like this certain thing except Shelley still published. We learned from this event that Shelley didn't really care about what other people thought of him and his actions. He was self-educated and did what he wanted. To learn about the actual person can help us learn what he's saying in his works. After researching his life, my group understnad Shelley as a person and also as a poet.
I believe I did contribute to the team. I acted as a researcher and organizer. I'm not particular great at presenting things so I like to have everything prepared in front of me. I did an outline of our slide presentation and distributed it to the group so that the others could have references when presenting. I also made the lesson plan and tried to include every aspect of our presentation--include its intentions. As a junior, it was a bit difficult working with other seniors. I felt like because I was younger I had to do more to prove that I was capable of working with other seniors. That's why I tried to do everything. In the end, I realized the group didn't expect me to do all of the work and that they didn't care that I was a junior.
My group’s lesson explaining the life and works of William Blake met the goals and objectives require. Our primary goal, along with meeting the requirements of the assignment, was to try to develop an informational presentation that both held the audience’s attention and provided them with the means to retain the information presented. The former of the two criteria was very difficult to achieve, being in a large room with many potential distractions. However, we succeeded in doing so at least in the forefront of our presentation with the witty poem we wrote collectively. The latter I feel we achieved moderately well. The beginning portion of our presentation (which is what my focus was) included a brief history of Blake’s early life, focusing primarily upon his influences. I feel that including these influences allowed the audience to gain a higher understanding of Blake’s work itself. Our other parts of the presentation, including an analysis of his works, I feel were done quite well and could be understood by our audience with relative ease.
While I feel that the presentation itself was done fairly well, there were a few modifications that may have been made to aid in the overall project. Due to multiple absences and scheduling conflictions, our entire group was rarely together at one time. Because of this, we were not able to complete the project to the full levels of our capability. Communication was slightly off, and we simply did not have enough time to create the power point and presentation to our full liking. Another area we may have been able to improve was class participation. The location of our presentation was not exactly conducive to our desired goal. Participation seemed to be lacking on all presentations overall; for whatever reason no one appeared to have a great desire to discuss other than a select few, which I feel may have been in part due to a level of discomfort that comes with combining two groups of people that do not know one another well. In addition, our lack of preparation time restrained us from practicing our presentation, or even deciding who was going to discuss what until very shortly before our presentation date. This may have caused our presentation to be a bit choppier than our original intention. If given more time, I would have liked to refine our power point and possibly run through our presentation at least once.
This assignment promoted student learning by showing the importance of individual research and thought. We spend a great deal of our time in school being lectured in our various areas of study. Many of us sit through these lectures and never wrap our thoughts around exactly what is being said. We write down the notes, look them over maybe, but we never really gain a full understanding of what we are being taught. With this assignment, we were forced to look up information, learn it, and apply it so that we would be able to pass this information onto others. Because we needed to think about the material and apply it, we truly learned it. I’ll be honest, I barely remember the presentation that was quite a long time ago, but I do remember a good portion of the material I researched for my part of the presentation. I remember much more than I would have if the information had just been dictated to me.
Overall, this was an interesting assignment that forced us to learn to co-operate with peers that we would not normally work with in a time-budgeted environment. This is a skill that will become quite useful later on in our lives, specifically in the working world.
My group’s presentation on francisco goya met a large number of my goals however there was still room for improvement. The presentation met my expectations in the sense that we were able to convey the drastic changes in style the Goya experienced through the course of his life. We accomplished this by presenting 3 paintings represented by the three distinct portions of his life. By using these paintings we showed how Goya’s paintings went from whimsical portrayals of the aristocracy to paintings critiquing aspects of society of which he did not approve and finally to a dark and gruesome style that portrayed inner feelings of depression. The presentation also provided an accurate account of his life and gave the class in my opinion a good amount of information about his life. Our power point was also easy to read in a sense of just looking at the slides. We also provided information in addition to what was on our power point, rather than just reading off of the slides. Our class hand outs also provided clear information in an organized manner that I felt was easy to follow. Despite all this our presentation did not meet all of my goals. Despite presenting a large amount of information our presentation only lasted alittle longer than 10 minutes. This could have been improved to better meet the time restraints by adding in an analysis of another painting or by going more in depth into the paintings we already presented. Our classmates were also not very involved in the presentation when it came to answering our discussion questions. A few people did answer the first two questions but the last one I needed to answer because people either did not pay attention and did not know the answer or did not want to say it. We could have done something similar to what Elaine’s group did, like brought in candy or small prizes to inspire more people to answer and participate in the presentation. We could have also made our presentation itself more interesting. Although we did provide information in addition to what was on our slides we essentially read off of a piece of paper rather than doing something that engaged the class.
This assignment promoted student learning because it essentially forced us learn about important figures of the romantic era by making us teach our classmates about it. However this assignment could be modified that rather than a class handout, a class worksheet could be handed out that would force the class to fill it out. By doing this they would have to be more engaged in the presentation rather than just depending on the information given in the handouts. When considering the use of my lesson plan by future students I would suggest that they use it largely for information about Goya’s life and varying style and attitude towards art. However the analysis of his paintings could have been done more effectively and in more detail.
I contributed to my team’s success by creating the power point and bibliography, which Faiza edited. Faiza contributed to the team by creating the discussion questions and the handout which I also edited. By splitting up the roles evenly and editing our partners roles we were able to express our opinions and contribute to all aspects of the project in a timely and efficient manner. It also prevented arguments over aspects that we may have had issues with had we worked on the entire project together. We also split the slides evenly and each one of us contributed to presenting about half of the slides to the class. By using these methods we were able to evenly divide the work and finish the project in a manner that satisfied the both of us with the resulting power point, handouts, and discussion questions.
My group made a lesson for Robert Byrnes, and we met all of our own project goals and objectives, even overachieving in some respects than what we originally hoped for. We had all done class projects before, and we all knew that unless we provided some sort of interesting side piece to our lesson, it would be hard to associate some facts to Robert Byrnes. Therefore, we planned out an activity with a lot of humorous potential (Create a poem using Scottish terms and phrases) and some snacks. As a team, we worked very well with each other, and were on task for every class. We were able to finish all of our work with time to spare because of diligent work habits. We also all assigned roles to each member, and set out a schedule, and expected each member to have their part complete by a certain date, similar to homework. In the group, I was assigned background, history, and had to make sure the information that went into our slides was coherent and not too cluttered.
This assignment was in theory good because I find I learn better if I can teach it/present my information, but as an AP Euro class, we weren’t going to be getting into the detail that the Brit Lit class had. If we could have made the assignment a bit more subject friendly for us, such as having to look up an increment of time that was during our writer’s lives, but not overlapping others’ lives, then it would have been a more beneficial assignment for our class.
For the Romantic Era project, my group presented the poet William Wordsworth. While I believe we successfully researched factual and complete information about the poet, different methods could have been used to involve the class in order to improve the quality of their learning experience. My group managed to keep all information easy to understand; however, the powerpoint and crossword puzzle were not enough to keep the student’s full attention. If we were to do this project again, other methods would have been used in just the presentation aspect. Though the students filled out the crossword puzzle, they did not have much motivation to do so or hold an interest in the subject; prizes for the tables that correctly completed the puzzle may have held their attention.
This assignment promoted student learning as it made the students researching their poet understand their research to a level where they could teach that information to a group of students. The student to student teaching as well promoted student learning as a student is more likely to understand a topic taught by a peer than taught by an adult. This project could have been modified by having the groups focus solely on the poet’s work rather than his or her life; while some facts about the poet’s life are important to understand his or her writings, information such as where the poet was born is likely unnecessary and loses the focus of the students listening to the presentations. Shorter presentations with a more focused point would have been more successful in teaching the main ideas of the era.
In my group for the project, I was assigned the role of putting together the presentation. I looked at all research from my group members, made suggestions on what they should say during the presentation and what they should leave out, and put the presentation information into an appropriate order that would best teach the students about the poet. I also created the powerpoint for the group’s presentation.
The Romantic era Project that I worked on was on the subject of John Keats. The project was reasonably well presented, showing a biography of the poet followed by an analysis of three of his most famous poems. An improvement to both this and the other presentations would have been more time dedicated to the connections between poems, literature, art, and the culture. It is more important to connect the dominant themes of the culture to the social time period. The connections are what makes the analysis of the art important; as an understanding of the period and the social and political forces that shaped the era. Another way to make the activity more valuable would be to increase the audience participation- few kids wished to read a poem or offer their comments on it, leading to a limited value of the activity for those viewing the presentation.
The work was quite well distributed within my group. Each person either worked with another on analyzing a poem or on telling Keats’ biography, save me. I worked alone on deconstructing La Belle Dame Sans Merci. The distribution of work was good and balanced and it was without difficulty that we all pitched in to help cover Kieran’s part as he was absent as we had worked together on many parts and had a comprehensive understanding of the man and his works.
On the whole however, I believe that this activity was not an efficient use of class time. While the romantic era is an unquestionably important cultural period in European development, I do not believe that the understanding garnished from this extensive research project was worth the investment of class time. Perhaps with fewer class periods dedicated to the research and presentations, it would be more worth it though the scope of the project requires a week simply to present the literary figures. The presentations as they were also represented only British poets, leaving out nonpoetic figures as well as any non-British figures.
I feel our group did the best they could with the time given. Although our grade was not one that we expected, we felt we did well with the time we were given. We met the goals that we were given in the time allotted, and we still did not receive the grade we expected. In retrospect, we could have gone into more analysis of our poet’s work. When the poems were given in the lesson, we did not give as much analysis of the work and how it related to her style. When going last, it gave us a perspective on what was needed in the project. We tried to mirror what the other groups were doing in our project, and I think that took away from our original plan. With this kind of project, it is hard to get the audience engaged. We put an example of our poet’s work up on the projector, and tried to engage our audience with the styles our poet used, but it seemed there was little to no feedback from the audience as to what we were showing them. This assignment promoted student learning in that part of the criteria was to engage the audience. We tried to get the audience involved by getting them to put their input on the poet’s style. But, with all we did, it seemed that students did not want to engage in what were teaching, or we were taking the wrong approach in relaying the information. Either way, students were asked to learn and give their input on the writer’s style, so this project promoted student involvement. When telling others how to create their lesson, promote a more interactive involvement with the audience. Have some kind of worksheet where they can apply themselves and still learn about the author and their styles as a writer. With students involved, you will get more learning from the students and you will get more of the students to retain their knowledge. During the process of our project, I helped with the development of our slideshow and the explanation of the poems to the students. When the poems were brought up on the projector, I was the one to attempt to give an analysis of the poems. I also researched the poet and contributed the facts section that was a part of our slideshow.
My group studied the life and works of William Blake for the Romantic Era project. I feel that my group completed the project diligently and presented our information to the class in a method that was as interesting as you can for a topic like this. I found this to be somewhat of a boring topic to study, especially having to listen to classmates lessons on their poets for approximately 20 minutes each. At times it felt tedious to pay attention but I feel that each group researched and presented their findings on their poets nicely. Although it was somewhat tough for the audience to give their complete attention to the speaking group I feel that this assignment was a great learning tool for researching and individual author. I felt I learned a lot more about William Blake’s life and works than I did the other poets after the presentations.
I felt that my group worked well together. We accomplished a lot of work and were able to cover most aspects of William Blake’s life and included this information into our presentation. We were able to split the research up equally between group members. I personally worked on finding information on Blake’s early life and finding some paintings and works of art by Blake. We presented this information to the class as interesting as we could. We attempted to involve the class in our discussion by reading aloud to the students and having them answer questions on our poet.
Overall it was a difficult topic to teach to the class especially for a long period of time like what was required. But I feel that each group did a very nice presenting their information under the circumstances and requirements given.
Our group created a lesson plan focusing on the life and works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Our main goal and aim for the lesson plan was to accomplish a presentation that would both include all the necessary and important information on the poet but also at the same time gain the attention and interest of our peers. With that in mind, our group did our best to be as creative as we possibly could be with the slides and on the information. I feel that the lesson implementation of my group did indeed meet our goals and objectives very well. This project had a lot of requirements and seemed almost impossible to cover all the information and at the same time make the information interesting, so what my group did to execute this mission was separate and divide the tasks in groups of three so that each person would have a specific topic to focus on completely. As the presentations progressed, I realized that a lot of other groups as well as mine as a unison should have done to make our presentation complete. And that was, although we went into depth on the poet's life, we didn't really go into depth of the works of the poet and how those works coincided with their life and what vital events may have caused their output on their poems. I feel that I can speak for all the groups that it was a very awkward situation when it came to class discussions. When questions were asked to the class or if expected to comment, there was always a very very long silence with the occasional awkward laughter because of the silence. I think the presentations would have gone by more smoothly for the class and the group presenting if the students were more active and involved. This assignment promoted student learning because there was a collaborative and cooperative working environment within members of a group or a team. And within those groups there was an exchanging of ideas and thoughts to reach a common goal. Honestly, I find the biggest problem in group assignments is that there is possibly the lack of communication that may take place within the group. For an example, I found that in some lesson plans, it seemed disorganized because topics were divided amongst the group members, and when put together there didn't seem to be a sense of unison. For a very organized and smooth lesson plan, in the future I feel it wise if the members had more communication and time management so that they may collaboratively create the lesson plan. For my group's success, I was actually the one to come up with the in class activity and was responsible to create the game. With a partner, I also worked the works and interpreting the poems of our poet. I also made the hand out with all the important information of the poet on an outline form with blanks to fill in.
This assignment, although time consuming and very troublesome overall had a very important lesson for the building of leadership and the ability to, without any teacher involvement, create a lesson for the whole class. It taught us leadership, but it also taught us about the Romantic Era in a more creative way.
Post a Comment