Model Classroom Lessons

Lesson 1 "Convince Me!":
The goal in this lesson was to improve public speaking specifically pertaining to persuasive speaking. I wasn't crazy about this lesson for many reasons and thought of several ways it could be improved. For the warm-up activity, the teacher is supposed to ask students to raise their hands if they have ever seen on TV a political leader and explain what they think are characeristics of tha person's speech. For the age level, it's better for the teacher to give a concrete example. For instance, instead of "How many of you have ever seen on TV a political leader, like the president, give a speech?" to "How many of you saw President Obama's Inauguration Speech last week?" Also, instead of the teacher writing the characteristics of a good speech on the board as she calls on students, kids could pair up and make T-chart brainstorming what makes a speech good adn what makes a speech bad. As a group discussion, then discuss what the kids had written down. Now, the kids have something to go from and more discussion can be produced.

Web work: One think I would suggest to this teacher is that he/she look into a program called VoiceThreads. Here, the teacher can post the video and each student has the power of creating comments (which appear as a pop up next to the video) while the video occurs. They can read other peoples comments as the video is streaming. That way the kids are working toether, but on their own at the same time while watching.

Reenactment: Instead of the students reenacting the excerpt they saw, why don't they think of something taht they want to occur in their own personal lives and create a speech more authentic and real to them. Then, they can use what they have learned from the public speakers and apply it to their own lives.

Wrap-up: Making posters seems to be just a time-filler activity.

Lessons 2 and 3: "Man of the Mancha" and "Extra!Extra! Read All About It!"
I really liked botho f tehse activities for several reasons. First, I love how the "Man of the Mancha" warm-up begins with a painting by Pablo Picasso to begin background building for the students. Brining in art is a great way to add a little flare of culture to a classroom. Both lessons require the students to go onto certain websites that allow exploration and self-paced learning to occur. In the "Extra!Extra" lesson, students had to first bring in a real newspaper and become familiarized with the sections. Then, it was easier for the kids to navigate the website, because they were already familiar with the design lay-out of a newspaper and terminology. Both lessons are well-organized and there is a good mix of both cooperative and invidual working time.