Simulating Success

Man, oh man, have I taught a couple of marathons this week. They've both been very fun and rewarding for me and, more importantly, my students, but sheesh, they've really eaten up some hours. I'll have to get better at keeping them shorter, because there simply won't be enough time in the day!

The lesson I'm going to talk about today is one that I'm particularly proud of. I spent a lot of time creating the idea, and it seemed to go over very well. I was trying to teach a lesson that made students aware of the following learning target: humans' ability to meeting their basic needs is both limited and helped by their environment and the natural environment around them. I was teaching them this universal lesson through the lens of Native Americans, the theme of my unit. As this was the first lesson, it was important that I get them familiar with all of the topics at hand. To do this, I created a survival simulation. With the lights low and their eyes closed, students listened to me read them a description of a survival challenge that they were being thrust into: a month alone in the pacific coast wilderness. When the lights came on, we talked about what we'd do first, and then brainstormed a list of basic human needs, including food, water, shelter, warmth and tools. The students continued to brainstorm in small group discussions their strategies for survival, prompted and pushed by my questions and alterations to the situation. To keep their minds imaginative, a slide show of PNW coastal wilderness pictures flashed by on the screen. At the end of the activity, which took over an hour, the students responded to a writing prompt that I'd created, describing their strategies for meeting their needs. They also drew pictures of their imaginary created shelters. This was a subtle set up for the final evaluation of the unit - students will make model Native American houses with regionally appropriate resources.

The best part of this lesson was that I think it worked! Students responded to all of my questions very thoughtfully. By the end of the lesson, students were able to describe to me with great confidence basic human needs, and how they could meet them using only natural resources from their surrounding environment. When I challenged them by reshaping the environment (taking away the option of driftwood) students were able to thoughtfully come up with other options for shelter that relied on other resources, and explain why they made their decisions. When I taught the next lesson, brainstorming natural resources was a cinch. In fact, they were able to develop a hypothetical list for the Plateau tribes as well, a very thoughtful list, too, I might add.

Now, just because it was successful doesn't mean that it was perfect. I regretted a couple of things along the way. If I could reteach this lesson, I would be way more aggressive with writing things on the board. I decided in this lesson to let the discussion stay oral, and not write anything down. In hindsight, I don't think that this was the most beneficial for the students. I think that more students would have been able to create more complete answers to the writing prompt if some of the language that we'd used would have been present in written form for them. I also think that I should have been a little bit better about only responding to raised hands. The behavior of the class was over all absolutely stellar, especially considering the duration of the activity, but during discussion certain students had the tendency to holler out the right answer. If they were wrong, they were reprimanded, but if students blurted what I was looking for, I (oops) sometimes went with it. I can improve.

I've already planned on extending this lesson, by taking it more deeply into a study of how the Native Americans responded to the same natural resources, but with over 10,000 years of time to figure out how to meet their needs. Students were excited to figure this out at the end of the lesson. If I wanted to, and if I had the time and resources, this would be an optimal unit for a field trip. And at the very least, the students general interest in shelter will be very useful when I assign the take home project. There is no reason that every student shouldn't be able to use this information in many aspects of their life. Any time that we talk about a foreign culture, I will be able to relate back to this EALR, and they'll have the tools to appropriately and fluently respond.

This lesson was an overwhelming success, and I'm very proud of it. If they all went this well, life would be too easy. My second one, for the record, went very well too. I hope that you all are having such fun with your respective lessons. This was an excellent experience for me - one of those "I can do this!" moments. I can only wish you the best of luck, so I will. Good luck!

-Mr. Reni

(editors note: whoops, I forgot to click publish when I wrote this earlier this morning. I hope that my eager and devoted readers weren't left wanting!)