Unit Reflection On November 13th and 14th Julie Marks and I were welcomed into Mr.

Williams Civics class to teach our lessons on Poverty that our Secondary Principles class was asked to present. While maintaining this focus Julie and I added the topic of malnutrition to satisfy our content major of Science. Our overall goal was to have students become aware of the issue of poverty and malnutrition and how it relates to themselves and the community in which they live. The students in Mr. Williams Civics class are typically juniors and seniors and throughout the two day lesson we presented; students remained highly engaged. In order to tie together the two concepts of poverty and malnutrition the iconic McDonalds Fast Food Restaurant was used. This proved to be a strength in this lesson because students already had a set belief system, knowledge about, and experience dining at these types of establishments in their community. Activities that were built into this lesson pushed for student involvement. The use of Popcorn reading was one such activity. This accomplished many goals; first of all since Julie and I did not know the names of the students, this activity allowed the student who was chosen to read a paragraph, to choose the reader of the next paragraph. Secondly, this helped to create a type of challenge to the student who was picked by their peer to read the next paragraph, an unspoken dare if you will. Lastly, I believe the video clip of The Colbert Report and The McDonalds spending guide was a great hook. The sarcasm and humor was a great medium to introduce the topic of poverty. It allowed for the views of 4 million fast food workers to be conveyed and helped to initiate student responses to the issue. I believe this lesson was a good lesson for the level at which Julie and I are at in our studies, although it can be improved in several ways to create an even stronger lesson. A class discussion was held after the students watched The Colbert Report video and it was discussed as a class. I believe that if a handout

with questions for the video was printed out that this would have helped with the flow and management of lesson and given students a focus of the video. This would have also allowed for Julie and I to collect and grade the lesson for that day and have students work for the first day. The second area that would need improvement would to be to reinforce students raising their hands. I believe that not only students, but myself and Julie had gotten caught up in the discussions taking place. Having students raise their hands is important so that all students can get a chance to comment and allows for everyone to hear what is being said. The area in which students were not as engaged was in the second day when the class split up to do group work. Although a large majority of the students were engaged in the activity, some students wandered off topic and it was necessary to walk the room and check in with individual groups to not only answer questions but refocus a small percentage of students. This is one drawback to group work. I believe that students achieved the goals and objectives set forth in this lesson. Julie and I were able to cover the important aspects of our lesson and had good time management skills. Students were able to see the correlation of malnutrition from eating fast food and were able to relate that with fast food restaurants creating a cycle of low wages for their workers and catering to a low earning consumer base. Furthermore, students were able to not only take a look at the Girl, 17 article and see how that contributed to malnutrition and health issues from it, but were also able to take a critical look at their own diets as well. This assignment allowed me to see how a thematic unit across content areas can be planned and how it contributes to overall student learning. Interestingly enough I learned that unit planning has a broad braining storming base and one must remain focus on ones objectives in order to create a targeted lesson. Although it can be difficult to come up with an engaging lesson plan, the amount of time and

planning one puts in to it helps to create a targeted and engaging experience for the students in the class free from behavioral issues. Mr. Williams feedback is invaluable and I aspire to be on his level of teaching in the future. I enjoyed hearing his suggestions and believe that they are all valid and will be helpful in the future. A big thank you goes out to Mr. Williams and the students in room 209 at New Britain High School.