Reflection In light of all areas of planning, but especially in terms of your stated purpose and learning goals, in what ways was the activity successful? How do you know? In what ways was it not successful? How might the activity be planned differently another time? Overall, this lesson was successful in achieving its goals. Giving students a variety of means to access the content was definitely beneficial to them. It allowed my diverse students a range of opportunities to receive the content in a way that would be most optimal to their learning style. For example, many students liked seeing the primary source photographs. This hooked them into the lesson and allowed them to engage. This was particularly important for my ELL students. This was their means to access the content, and seeing their pictures (student samples 5), they embraced the material and were able to follow along with the sensory worksheet. Many other students liked hearing a letter from a girl around their age and her experience with the journey. They got so excited about hearing this letter, that I read them many other excerpts of stories from immigrant children. On the other hand, other students liked being able to fully embody and embrace the content through the sensory worksheet. Some students got so excited about this lesson that it got rowdy at many points throughout. They loved being able to pick their character and wanted to tell everyone about their person, which made for a noisy classroom. In the end, allowing students this variety of access allowed them to achieve success. Additionally, I know success was achieved off of students’ sensory worksheets and gist statements (see in student sample section). Students seemed to grasp the hardships that immigrants faced on their ship voyage over to America. They were able to visually think about the experience and use the video, photographs and excerpts to reflect on the immigrant experience. Overall, one of my main goals was for students to begin developing empathy for
Reflection In light of all areas of planning, but especially in terms of your stated purpose and learning goals, in what ways was the activity successful? How do you know? In what ways was it not successful? How might the activity be planned differently another time? Overall, this lesson was successful in achieving its goals. Giving students a variety of means to access the content was definitely beneficial to them. It allowed my diverse students a range of opportunities to receive the content in a way that would be most optimal to their learning style. For example, many students liked seeing the primary source photographs. This hooked them into the lesson and allowed them to engage. This was particularly important for my ELL students. This was their means to access the content, and seeing their pictures (student samples 5), they embraced the material and were able to follow along with the sensory worksheet. Many other students liked hearing a letter from a girl around their age and her experience with the journey. They got so excited about hearing this letter, that I read them many other excerpts of stories from immigrant children. On the other hand, other students liked being able to fully embody and embrace the content through the sensory worksheet. Some students got so excited about this lesson that it got rowdy at many points throughout. They loved being able to pick their character and wanted to tell everyone about their person, which made for a noisy classroom. In the end, allowing students this variety of access allowed them to achieve success. Additionally, I know success was achieved off of students’ sensory worksheets and gist statements (see in student sample section). Students seemed to grasp the hardships that immigrants faced on their ship voyage over to America. They were able to visually think about the experience and use the video, photographs and excerpts to reflect on the immigrant experience. Overall, one of my main goals was for students to begin developing empathy for