Okemos+High+School+Group


 * Okemos High School Group**
 * 9th Grade U.S. History**
 * Andrea Noffsinger, Phil Janis, Krista Flanders, Tim Whelan, Matt Mount**

__Research Questions__


 * What type of lesson plan and instructional strategies could help students understand the definition, characteristics, and uses of Propaganda?**


 * What examples and resources could be used to help students understand World War I propaganda and what strategies could be used to help students understand propaganda in their lives today?**

__Curriculum Resources__:

classroom textbook, images (propaganda examples) http://www.hippocampus.org/course_locator?course=AP%20US%20History%20II&lesson=56&topic=3&width=800&height=684&topicTitle=Mobilizing%20the%20Nation%20for%20War&skinPath=http://www.hippocampus.org/hippocampus.skins/default http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda http://library.thinkquest.org/C0111500/proptech.htm http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/ww1posters/ http://academic.cuesta.edu/acasupp/as/404.htm

__Observation Notes__ 11/10 - Observed note taking/PowerPoint on progressive era, helped teacher fill out envelopes 11/15 - Observed the class, monitored class discussion and kept track of students' participation during discussion, watched a movie on some of the presidents 11/17 - Observed the class, monitored class discussion and tallied participation points, watched a movie on Hawaii and Imperialism 11/29 - Introduction to WWI, Ugly Diagram worksheet/graphic organizer completed as a class, worked grading civil liberties worksheet 12/6 - WWI Propaganda lesson, watched and observed teacher teach the lesson we prepared for the class, students listened, took notes, and answered questions during the lecture, after the class we debriefed with our mentor teacher about the lesson

__Lesson Plan__ Topic: World War I Propaganda, presented on 12/6/11 Lesson Plan:

PowerPoint: P.S. Sorry the power point is in three different files, the original was too big to insert on the wiki.

__What was learned about social studies, student thinking, and student learning?__

We learned that social studies has many more topics that are not necessarily thought of right away such as propaganda. It turned out to be quite an important item relating to World War I and could be brought up again during WWII. We liked the idea of this topic because it is one that forces the students to engage in some critical thinking and learn ways in which information can be presented to favor a certain viewpoint. It was also really interesting to see how students thought and learned during this lesson. They were able to pick up all of the main points that our mentor teacher wanted to convey and we were all really pleased with that. We think it had to do a lot with the lesson structure and our mentor teacher's style. He is very engaging and is able to keep the students' minds in the classroom. This was supplemented by also providing guided notes which served to help the students keep track of the lesson and fill in the missing information.

__How will the research be shared with our school & professional communities?__

Throughout the process we shared our research and observations with the teacher. The teacher was able to sharpen our thinking and focus our observation in certain ways. We underwent the project of figuring out the types of instructional strategies that most effectively teach the topic of propaganda as well as how to transpose this knowledge into a bite-sized chuck so that students would walk away from class with an understanding of propaganda. We informed the teacher along the way and shared ideas that in turn will be shared among other members of the department. To be fair, we were the recipients of many suggestions and experiences that were shared by the teacher and added to our research. In conversations about our placement with our class, we hope to share resources and input that we have gathered as a result of this lesson-writing process. All of the materials above are intended to be available for any in this professional community to try or inspect. In this way we hope that we have added a valuable piece to our professional community in TE 407.

__How has our thinking changed about teaching this topic or unit?__ This topic is more complex then we had originally thought. There are many different kinds of propaganda that was used during World War I and it was hard to narrow the kinds to just a few to teach the students. When we first started planning the lesson, none of us had thought that we would need to censor any of the propaganda we used, but once we chose all the examples we wanted to use, Tim noticed that on one of them, the womens shirt was torn and was not covering what it was suppose to, so ended up censoring it. We never considering having to censor anything but now that is definitely something we all will keep in mind if/when we have to teach this lesson again. There was also a lot of different components to propaganda that we can look at. There is the wording, imaging, sizing of words and images, colors, etc. So we had to think about those things as well. Propaganda is a more complex topic then we originally thought, and learning these many components made us refine our thinking a little more and reminds us to be a little more specific.

__What went well during the lesson study cycle? What do we want to change?__

We felt that the whole lesson cycle went really well. The PowerPoint was easy to follow and effectively communicated the ideas about World War I propaganda. Our guided notes kept the students paying attention to the lesson. We know that the students understood our lesson because they answered the questions to our assessment well. The only thing that we would change is really just the fact that we did not get to have the students work as a class and make their own propaganda. Our teacher had mistakenly had it in his head that it was a flex day, meaning that the class period was shortened. He finished the lecture in time but did not start the creating propaganda activity because he did not think they had time. Once he had realized his mistake, it was too late because he had already had them start working on homework. This is not us trying to bash the teacher. It just would have been interesting to run that activity and see how the students took it.

__What questions and ideas related to this lesson would we investigate further?__ There are a few different questions and ideas related to this lesson that we would investigate further given the opportunity. We would like to have gone more in depth to the different types and usages of propaganda. We were not sure how specific we should get with 9th graders when it came to types of propaganda but reflecting on the lesson we believe that they would have benefited from a more thourough examination of the types of propaganda. We would also like to investigate how propaganda was specifically used during World War I. The lesson was set in a unit about World War I so it would have been nice to talk more about how the propaganda we were examining directly related to the overall unit. Lastly, we would like to investigate further ways to teach a lesson on propaganda without using direct instruction. Our lesson went very well and the direct instruction was successfull but it would be nice to explore other ways of teaching the same content.