Comments on Day Three

Here is my lesson plan for the third and final day of the unit:

Objectives: -Analyze primary and secondary sources.

-Utilize technology in your study of history.

Materials: Students- Pen/pencil

Teachers- Quizzes; computer lab/laptop cart

Activities: Do Now: Students take quiz to demonstrate knowledge from last night's reading of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

-Log in to laptop computers. Direct students to voicethread.com

-Instruct students to view a voice thread I designed featuring documents from slavery era.

-Have students leave written comments on primary documents.

-Assign students a voice thread to leave comments on for homework.

Homework: Leave comments on three of the documents on a voice thread.

Assessment: I will grade students on completion of comments and depth of commentary.

HOW IT WENT:

Overall, this lesson was a success. None of my students had used voicethread before, so it took a while to register everyone. As always, the laptops were slow and unpredictable. As a result, we did not get to spend as much time examining the primary documents about slavery as much as I would have liked. Everyone did have the opportunity to practice leaving comments while they were in class.

On my school webpage (http://sites.google.com/a/bedford.k12.ma.us/hebert/home) I listed the link for the voicethread students needed to leave comments on. The voicethread can be viewed at http://voicethread.com/?#u1021955.b1281342

Most students took the assignment seriously and wrote salient comments. Some were insightful, while most were rather simplistic in my opinion. One student unfortunately left totally inappropriate comments that were inappropriate given the sensitive subject matter. Fortunately, I had set the voicethread up so I had to approve any comments before they were made public. I kept these offensive comments hidden and spoke to the student the next day, informing him he earned a zero for the assignment and that what he did was unacceptable. He apologized. This episode made me appreciate the filter voicethread gives us as teachers.

I would like to use voicethread again in the future: unfortunately, my free subscription of 3 voicethreads is used up, and I don't wish to pony up the exhorbitant fee to buy it for a year. Maybe one day my school will subscribe to it.