Haslett+High+School

Haslett High School Field Placement Planning Space

Contact Information:

Katelyn Fedewa (fedewak4@msu.edu) Jason Schultz (schul434@msu.edu) Rachel Beardsley (beards12@msu.edu) Kim Boloven (bolovenk@msu.edu) Sara Worthington (worthi39@msu.edu)

= __**Daily Updates**__ =

11/08/2011:  Today was our first day at Haslett High School. There were a lot of interesting things that went on. We go for their first period U.S. History class and than his second class is an English class. His third hour his intern teaches so that will give us a good opportunity every Tuesday and Thursday to debrief. First, I would like to mention that it is somewhat frustrating to be in a group of five - nothing against my colleagues. With a teacher, an intern, and 5 seniors, it is hard for everyone to have an active role in the classroom. I know that observation can be very telling and worthwhile, I did that for 250 and 302 and was hoping the senior placements would allow us to take much more active roles and for that I am disappointed. I am not disappointed in the actually classroom though, our mentor teacher is great and it is a great class to observe. Today he did a lecture on the propaganda of World War I and did a lot of questioning. Since we are currently learning lecturing and questioning strategies this was helpful. As we talked about in class yesterday it is interesting to see how to call on students for questioning and I like how he did it. He had a couple students who always raised their hands and he called on them frequently, but he would also randomly call on someone else and ask others to get involved in which they did. He seems very respected and liked by his students and they had playful banter going on which made the 7:50am class more enjoyable for the students and myself. Another thing I noticed was the fact that every student had their own history textbook, a huge and new one, that they brought to class. In my previous placements they couldn't afford that so they could only use the books in the classroom. I think this is interesting. After his class we met with our mentor teacher and he assigned us the lesson plan he wants us to revamp: The Harlem Renaissance.

-Katelyn Fedewa

11/10/2011: Today, the class continued their lesson on World War I and President Wilson's Fourteen Points. The previous day, however, the students broke up into 7 groups and were assigned certain Committees and had to present their major contributions, important figures, as well as design their own propaganda poster, which was a lesson they had been learning about all week. I really enjoyed how each group designed their own poster, because it allowed them to think on how the saw each committee and used visuals that they believed would help influence or persuade people to abide or join their committee. After each group presented, the class would not clap like we would normally see. Instead the teacher counts down "1-2-3" and everyone claps just once. He says he does that in order to save time and to maybe wake up some students since it is just one loud clap. After the groups presented, a lecture began on Wilson's Fourteen Points. Our mentor teacher handed out a note packet for the students to take notes on while there was a Powerpoint. Judging from the last few days, it seems that the mentor teacher makes these note packets for each lesson and hands them to the students so they can take concise notes and pay attention to the lecture, rather than just spending the entire time writing, which I think is a great idea. He seems to want the students to engage in a lot of discussion or answering questions, the only problem is, it seems that the same students raise their hands and answer his questions. There is not a variety of students answering questions and at times, he asks students who have not spoken up, but it seems like pulling teeth. It is also beneficial to see because this is something all of us will run into. I felt it was another good day and next time, he said it is a review day and that he will probably be doing some type of Jeopardy game, which will be fun to see how the students react to that.

-Jason Schultz

11/15/2011: Today the class was devoted to a review day for their upcoming test on World War I. Mr. Beebe created a very neat Jeopardy type review that was on the SMART board and allowed students to interact with the review session directly. Students were also given a handout that had the Jeopardy board on the sheet so they were able to fill out the answers while the game was going on. Mr. Beebe gave the students the incentive of filling out the board for an option to receive five extra credit points on the exam just for participating in the lesson. The Jeopardy board included many questions on dates, numbers, important people, and key terms regarding all facts related to World War I. The students almost always were able to come up with the correct answer to the Jeopardy questions. From this, it was clear that Mr. Beebe did an outstanding job of preparing his students for the exam. At the end of the lesson when the Jeopardy game was complete Mr. Beebe began to hand back a pre-test to the students. He asked the students if they wanted to see their scores on the pre-test that tested their prior knowledge on World War I. He made it clear that these grades did not matter and did not reflect the information that the students knew about World War I. Many students asked to hear there grades and a handful decided that they did not want their grades disclosed. It will be interesting to go back to the school tomorrow and see how the students thought the exam went. -Kimberly Boloven

11/17/2011 and 11/22/2011 These two classes were devoted to issues relating to post-WWI society. Mr. Beebe has told us that this is usually a unit he has to get through quickly as he tends to spend more time on WWI and needs to get to a more in-depth unit on WWII. For this reason, he is setting up the unit exam a bit differently and is planning on doing some sort of open book or open note test, although he hasn't told the students this yet so that they still will be paying attention. The class spent both hours shortly discussing the prosperous times of the 1920's and things that were occurring during the times. In addition, they watched two documentary-type videos that did a good job of illustrating the transition from the end of WWI through the 1920's up until the Great Depression and will be a good segue into WWII. Throughout the videos they had guided note taking sheets to fill out while watching the film which touched upon some major points. Mr. Beebe has been very good with getting us copies of all the handouts in his class which we all appreciate. After the class, we were able to talk to Mr. Beebe and his student teacher, Scott, about our lesson on the Harlem Renaissance and get their input on how to finalize it. One of the two of them will be teaching the lesson to the class the Tuesday after Thanksgiving and we all came to an agreement on what the lesson will be and how it will be set up. -Rachel Beardsley

11/29/2011 Today was the day our Field Placement Project was presented to the class. Our powerpoint was presented by the intern in the class and from what I noticed, it seemed to go pretty well. The intern started the class with a song by Duke Ellington to get the students familiar with the sound of the 1920s and the type of music the Harlem Renaissance produced. The class had some background to the topic, but this lesson gave the students an in-depth look into what the Harlem Renaissance was all about and how it influenced the flowering of African American culture. The lecture seemed to go well, but there were definitely things that I would improve on to make it more enjoyable for the students. Some slides were information heavy and there were a few times where the students had to ask the teacher to go back to a previous slide in order to write down what was on the slide. The students were given a note packet to follow along with the powerpoint and take notes, but even with that, the students seemed to have spent more time writing than listening. The intern had a nice flow with the powerpoint. He gave students enough time to write down the information, but I felt he could have asked more questions and incorporated more student involvement within the lesson. One aspect of the lecture that I was happy and surprised with was the amount of student involvement with the Langston Hughes "I, too" poem. The intern read the poem aloud as the students followed along. After, the intern engaged a student discussion on the poem and asked for their insight and what they believed Langston Hughes was trying to say in the poem. I thought the students provided thought provoking, interesting ideas and there was more student engagement than I thought there was going to be. The lecture ended with the playing of the music video "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z and Alecia Keys. The goal was for the students to see the correlations between the pride African Americans have in their culture and how the Harlem Renaissance influenced the African American culture we see today in music by artist such as Jay-Z. The powerpoint was packed with a lot of information, but I feel that was due to the fact that the class was rushing through this section and we had to pack the entire lesson into one day. If we have more time, we could have split it up into multiple days, talking about artists, musicians, literary figures, etc on different days to ease the work load. Besides the limitations, I think the students responded well to the lecture. Some students seemed bored with it, but others were involved and paid attention. Having the guided note worksheet will be useful for the students because the notes followed the powerpoint and the book, which gives them easy access to the material if they missed anything during the lecture. The lesson was full proof and didn't go as planned, but when does anything go as planned in a classroom. Overall, I was satisfied with the lecture; the intern and our mentor teacher both said the lecture was well done due to the limitations of the amount of time the class spent on the chapter.

-Jason Schultz

Notes on 11/29/1011:

Just to add a few things to what Jason posted above. Some of the slides were a bit wordy and there were times that we didn't clarify things like I would have liked. For example, we just put information about the NAACP, but we never defined what the NAACP stands for. Those little things need to be there for the students to understand. Things that we may take for granted that they know, they do not. This was a good learning point for me in the future with teaching - remember that the student may not have the background knowledge that we assume they have. Also with the PowerPoint a couple of times we put names on a slide that were further explained on a later slide. This was hard for the intern because he would explain who the person was when it first appeared, but then it would come up again later which made it hard. This was just a sort of logistical thing with us making the slides and him presenting. Sometimes how we would teach a lesson isn't easily translated. Giving someone your materials doesn't make them teach it the way you would. I really liked the way the analyzing of the poem went. The students said some very intellectual things that I was expecting. When the intern first said he was going to read a poem they groaned, but then seemed to enjoy it. One thing I would have changed is the intern simply read the poem aloud to them - if it were my class I would have probably had a student read it.

- Katelyn Fedewa

Notes on 11/29/11: Adding to what everyone else said about the lesson, I definitely think that it was a learning experience to see how something we put on paper is translated into teaching by someone else. I thought that one of the most important parts of this lesson would have been the fact that this was the first time whites actually started to embrace African American culture and integrating it into their own lives. The Jay-Z video would have been a good way to connect that by saying that is just like rap in America as well. I think that the video may have been a little lost in translation, because he didn't really explain it to the students. It was just like an ending, but with really no meaning. Some students were able to make a connection, but I think it is important to actually tell them the reason you are showing them something. I think overall it was a good lesson and went really well, but I think it was also hard because we didn't get much feed back on how the experts thought it went. I think our worksheets went really well, too. I can't wait until we can actually teach our own!! : )

--Sara

Overall I learned that social studies is a subject area that can analyze events from the past and relate them to current events today. I learned that student learning takes place at its own pace. I learned that students may not have all the background information that they need to understand the lesson in its entirety. For example, the power point talked about the NAACP and the UNIA but no where on the slides was there a definition of what the acronym stood for. The research questions and observations that we have taken from this lesson will be shared with our peers in class as well as Mr. Beebe himself so people can see in what ways the lesson was successful and in what ways it could use improvement. I thought it was a great start to creating a lesson in the classroom and I thought that our research question that asked how students will learn about the Harlem Renaissance was adequately answered by students actively engaging in classroom discussion as well as filling out their exit slips at the end of the day's lesson. Some questions and ideas related to this lesson that I would investigate further would be to ask students to think about other real life examples that showed a society flourishing despite troubles times and economic hardships. I would want to see what comparisons students made. -Kim

12/1/11 Today the class had an awesome lesson that introduced the stock market to the class. Since the class just finished up the roaring twenties we all agreed that this was an excellent way to transition into the Great Depression. The day started out with a warm-up on the SMART board that asked students to think about the stock market. What is the stock market? What are some strategies for buying and selling stock? What are some concepts and terms that are associated with the stock market? These questions were meant to get the class thinking about what they knew about the stock market and activated any prior knowledge that students might have had on the subject. The teacher then opened the class up into a discussion and went over a few basic pointers about the stock market. Mr. Beebe discussed how one makes an investment and stock with the intention to make money. He told the class one rule to always remember was to buy low and sell high. Mr. Beebe then explained to the class that today they would be playing a game with the stock market and the students would be using monopoly money to buy certain stocks from companies that were around in the 1920s. Each student would start out with $500 and had the option of choosing which company to invest thier money in. To make things simple, all stock shares would start out at $10. Some students had some interesting questions before the game began. "Are these companies historically accurate?" and "Will the stock market crash in 1929?" Mr Beebe said that the companies were accurate but he adjusted the amount that the stocks would have increased to make the came a bit more exciting. As for the crash question Mr. Beebe was vague in his answer and didn't say yes or no as to whether or not it would crash or not. While investing in stocks students were instructed to record their stock value, cash, and total net gain. Students would play 10 rounds with each round representing a year from 1920-1929 with the year of 1923 being repeated. Prior to the start of the game Mr. Beebe handed out the students a sheet that listed the companies that they could invest from and each company had a brief summary about the company's history, stock market successes, and potential problems that could arise in the future so the students were knowledgeable about what companies to invest in. The companies were Kroger Foods, Radio Corporation, Mammoth Oil, The National Bank of Gotham City, Durant Motors, Midland Utilities, Kansas Pacific Railroad, and Tel-Tone. After listing the companies to invest in Mr. Beebe wrote on the board the industries that were represented from the companies: Agriculture, Electric, Oil, Bank, Auto, Technology, Rail Road, and telephone. Mr. Beebe did this to explain to the students what kind of companies would be valuable in the future. He pointed out that companies like technology have a high chance of doing well in the stock market because of the amount of appliances that were introduced in the 20s, technology was a hot thing to invest in! Now that the students had all of their knowledge to start, the students and us five went around to designated bankers to trade in our money for stocks. After everyone had made their trades Mr. Beebe put on the SMART board how the stocks changed in the next year. I invested in Kroger, Radio, and Telephone and luckily all of my stocks increased in value! It was exciting. I could tell a lot of the students were getting into the game and proud of their smart investment choices. In the second round I traded in my Kroger stock and invested in the rail road company. Again, the second round all of my stocks increased in value. The telephone stock had the highest increase and went up from $10 to $15 to $22 a share! The students could not get through all round and were instructed to write down their numbers so far and turn in their worksheet as an exit slip. The activity was awesome and gave the students a real feel for what it was like to invest in the market. I would love to use this lesson in my own classroom. The students were very engaged because they were emotionally invested in their decision making and were able to learn from their decision making and make new moves based off how the companies were doing each year. At the end of the lesson Mr. Beebe told us privately that the planned to have the market crash in 1927 instead of 1929 to throw off the students and make them feel what it must have been like to be completely shocked by the downfall of the market. Overall it was an excellent lesson and really fun day at Haslett. I wish I could finish the game with them tomorrow! -Kim

12/06/2011 Today was our last day at Haslett until January! It was bittersweet, but we'll be back. Today was primarily a lecture day. Our mentor teacher went through a PowerPoint on the Great Depression on the SMART board. They talked a lot about economic ideas that led to the Depression, which I think they understood much better after playing the stock market game the week before. During the PowerPoint there was a slide with a political cartoon criticizing Hoover. Our mentor teacher simply explained what the cartoon was to the students. I would have suggested taking a moment to allow the students to instead analyze the cartoon. With the PowerPoint there was a guided note taking sheet for them that filled in the blanks. I liked this method better than his usual sheets because they could fill in one word, but weren't having to constantly write things so fast that they aren't listening. This way they were forced to pay attention, but could listen rather than just writing the whole time. I am hoping in the future we will be there for days that they are doing more activity based things because it seems like we are always there on lecture days. -Katelyn

= __Field Placement Project: Harlem Renaissance Lesson Plan __ =

Action Research Questions: How will the students learn that the Harlem Renaissance was a "rebirth" of African American culture through art, music, and literature? How has the Harlem Renaissance impacted American society today?

Duke Ellington - Satin Doll

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=Interview with students:= I know we discussed using first initials so I'll go ahead and do that. I'll post the answers for Z and C which is who we discussed using for the project.


 * What is your typical day like?
 * C: Spanish - the teacher is really nice; Chemistry - this is a sophomore science course even though he is a freshman; math - accelerated program at MSU; gym
 * Z: gym - hates swimming because he doesn't really know how; english - cool teacher; academic lab
 * Who is your favorite teacher?
 * C: likes a teacher who keeps people on task because he doesn't like distractions; doesn't like it when other students are acting out or not paying attention; likes structure
 * Z: likes his English teacher because he sometimes acts like a kid and can relate to the students and isn't really uptight
 * Who is your least favorite teacher?
 * C: his math teacher at MSU because he just talks at the students for the whole time and doesn't do a really good job of explaining things
 * Z: his science teacher because he went off topic a lot just talking about himself and his stories, many of which were inappropriate; also extremely rude to the students and when Z would raise his hand would tell him that his questions weren't important
 * What helps you learn?
 * C: likes doing things to learn, but also really good at learning just by //__seeing__// the content; he thought it was really easy to figure out the stock game; seems to be very good at problem solving and thinking abstractly
 * Z: needs to write stuff down to learn it; not good with numbers and math
 * What do you hate in a classroom?
 * C: kids attacking each other; an out of control class
 * Z: straight lecturing; if a teacher just turns around and doesn't really pay attention to or look at the class; poor social skills; lack of enthusiasm
 * What are some struggles of high school?
 * C: getting the drive to actually do homework during free period, sometimes just needs to zone out
 * Z: getting through the crowded hallways, being a smaller guy and the hallways are so crowded
 * What do you enjoy about high school?
 * C: can avoid the people that you don't want to be around; used to get made fun of a lot in middle school and now can avoid some of that
 * Z: having more freedom; free time; sporting games to watch cheerleaders
 * What do you think about Mr. Bebee's class?
 * C: likes that he asks questions and keeps students engaged
 * Z: feels like the same people talk everyday; he chooses not to raise his hand because he is afraid that if he screws up everyone will look at him and judge him