Title:
Teaching Concepts and Relevance in History Class

Context:
This student learning project was written for my Dilemmas in Education class during my first quarter in the TEP program. It is a research paper that focuses on how students learn in a particular setting. During our first quarter observation field experience TEP students were asked to observe one lesson and then interview the teacher and students about the objectives and outcomes of the lesson. The main focus of the SLP was the issue of linking student learning to concepts or real life experiences. The lesson I observed did not achieve the teacher's desired objective because it did not address these issues. I will address this problem as well as explain the alternatives I outlined in the SLP in this entry slip.

UW TEP Goals and Targets:
Target 2A - The TEP student will understand how students learn and develop, and will provide learning opportunities that support intellectual, social, and emotional growth. I demonstrate my understanding of how students learn and develop by outlining revisions in the SLP lesson plan with ideas that help students form concepts and link history to real life experiences.

Target 2C - The TEP student will demonstrate respect for learners as thinkers and as individuals from diverse background and create a learning community in which individual differences are respected. I demonstrate respect for learners as thinkers by revising the SLP lesson with activities that engage students and let them witness their thought process change during the lesson.

Reflection:
My objective for the SLP was to analyze student learning in a classroom setting by observing a lesson and then interview two students on what they had learned. I set-up pre-interviews with the students to get a sense of their prior knowledge before they would be exposed to the lesson. Then I had post-lesson interviews where I tried to expose what they had learned.

The lesson I observed was a timeline activity where the students used their textbooks to look up the dates of specific events leading up to the American Revolution. The lesson was a week long activity with the only teaching objective being for students to identify major events leading up to the Revolutionary War. My critical analysis of this activity was that the lesson fell short of its objective because the students were not taught important concepts related to the Revolutionary War and the information they learned was not at all linked to their own personal lives. The most important part of the SLP project in my mind was to recognize the deficiency in the lesson and give practical alternatives to the lesson that will help to achieve the teacher's objective.

The main problem with this lesson was that it did not take into account how the students learned and did not respect the students as thinkers. The students were given a task without any explanation as to why it was important for them to know the information. The students were left guessing as to why the teacher wanted them to learn the material and many decided the American Revolution had nothing to do with their own lives. Overall the lesson was not effective in teaching students the lesson objective because the students had no schema to put any information they may have learned from the activity. Students need to either learn important concepts related to history or link history to their own lives in order to find significance in historical information. Neither concept formation or student experience were linked to the timeline lesson.

In my SLP I outlined alternatives to the timeline lesson I observed. One of those alternatives was for the teacher to introduce the timeline lesson by explaining to the students that the administration was forcing students to wear uniforms next school year. Then have the students discuss the issue and ask them if it is fair for the students to have to wear uniforms if they did not have any input on the issue. This is a great way to introduce the concept of representation. The discussion could then lead to the colonists' complaint about taxation without representation. Another alternative for the lesson would be for students to work in groups to guess where events should go on the timeline before they learn the dates. Then after they have completed the timeline they could look back on their original guesses and discuss their accuracy and the reasons why they chose the original dates. This activity would let the students observe their progress as thinkers and let them grow intellectually, socially, and emotionally through group discussion. Finally, I outlined a completely different lesson from the one described in my SLP that centered on concept-formation and the benefits of learning concepts instead of disjointed facts. This gives students concepts they can apply to other aspects of life, not just obscure historical facts that have little significance to a student. When I discussed the lesson with the teacher I was observing he explained to me that this was an introductory lesson into the events leading up to the Revolutionary War. He emphasized that the students needed to learn the main events and dates of those events if they were to understand the main concepts associated with the Revolutionary War. He explained that dates are important for students to memorize so they can see the causes and effects of history.

The students had a hard time understanding the objectives of the lesson and the sequence of the classroom curriculum. When I asked Karen what the next logical step should be for the class she replied, "We will probably be moving on because we have already done maps of the 13 colonies and move on to other time points outside of the revolution." While Mr. Olsen was giving his students this lesson to introduce them to the American Revolution, at least one of his students felt they were moving on to something else. This gives me the sense that the objectives of the lesson were not understood by the student I interviewed.

The objectives of the lesson I observed for my Student Learning Project were not met by the students I had interviewed. Even though the objectives could have been met by completing the lesson, most students could not meet them because the format of the lesson did not in any way build on concepts or relate to the students' lives. While the goals of the lesson were for students to learn the important events leading up to the revolution they were not able to learn them through reading the textbook and writing them down on a timeline. The issue of concept-based learning and tying lessons to students' lives is important because students need to gain skills in history class that can be transferred to other aspects of their lives. I understand that in the grand scheme of things students will not need to know the exact date of the Stamp Act or who Sam Adams was. But if students can learn valuable concepts through the study of history and apply them to events that affect their lives, then I hope they will continue to transfer ideas and issues from all disciplines to their own life. This way we are preparing students to become life-long learners, not just good Trivial Pursuit players.