L6+Aceto,+Jason

Teacher’s name: Mr. Jason Aceto Date of lesson: 3 Grade Level : 6-8 Topic: Examining how Aztec culture and their beliefs shaped their interactions with the Spanish invaders and eventually led to the demise of their civilizations. Student will understand that the interactions between foreign civilizations have drastic implications on the cultures of both sides. Student will know the implications for both Aztec/Spanish cultures after the conflict ended, we can take a look into connections between these events and those of conflicts today. Student will be able to create a newspaper blog about the implications for both the Aztec and Spanish civilizations and relate this to the current was in Iraq. // Maine // //Learning Results:// Social Studies-E.History E1 //Historical knowledge, concepts, themes and patterns//. Grade 6-8 "The Expansion and Interaction of Civilizations, 600CE-1450CE" //Students understand major eras, major enduring themes, and historic influences in the history of the various regions of the world.// b. Identify and analyze major historic eras, major historical eras, major enduring themes, turning points, events, consequences, and people in the history of the various regions of the world. During my lesson I will be asking students to use type II technology in the form of blogs. Also, the students will be encouraged to utilize music or pictures in their blogs to demonstrate all that they have learned throughout this unit. Some of the integration that will also be involved with this lesson is going to come from other subject areas. For example, this lesson will require students to utilize their writing skills from English in order to demonstrate the knowledge they have gained and explain what they know about the Aztec Empire’s history. Also, students will be utilizing their musical skills if they chose to put any background music in their blogs if they see fit. Artistic skills will also come into place if the students chose to include pictures to spice up their blog. Finally, another subject that will be integrated will be mathematics as the students will be thinking in an orderly and sequential way as they detail the broad scope of the history of the Aztec Empire. = Groupings: = = Students will be grouped in their collaborative work groups by simply working with the students at their tables. There will be no need to predetermine groups in this lesson as it will simply work best to keep them at their assigned seats and allow them to talk with those around them. To give the groups direction, the teacher will instruct them that they should be collaborating about what they have learned throughout this unit. The purpose of these groups is to allow students to work with peers and have an intellectual discussion of the material in this unit before they begin writing their final blogs on their own. These groups will allow different points of view to come across and will allow students to see this information presented from a variety of perspectives. = *Linguistic - students will be writing and reading while creating their graphic organizers and while creating their news blogs. Logical - students will be creating a timeline with the chronological order of the events that occurred during the Spanish invasion of the Aztec Empire. Spatial - students will be working with pictures detailing the Aztec/Spanish conflict which will enable these students to derive critical information about this topic through a different medium. Bodily-kinesthetic - students will be using the computer to create and to edit their news blogs. Musical - Students will be allowed to create a funky news jingle to introduce their blog. Intrapersonal - Students will be working independently on their blogs. Interpersonal - Students will be working in groups during the collaborative portion of the lesson. They will be sharing their knowledge of this material in their respective groups before branching off to their independent work. Naturalist – Students will be able to go outside to gather inspiration for their blogs. To meet the needs of all students, I will encourage them to look for various mediums in their sources. Each student will be given the opportunity to discuss and work with their group members to answer questions or clarify information. Also, to accommodate any IEP’s, 504’s, or ELLIDEP’s I will review the needs of the given student and provide an alternative that will suite their learning style. An example of this would be to encourage a student with a low reading level to have their laptop read the information back to them, which will allow them to retain more of the content and allow them to participate fully. Students will be encouraged throughout this activity to not only give a general outline of the history of the Aztec Empire, but to also bring in their understandings of the commonalities between the interactions with the Spanish invaders and the War in Iraq. The students have been comparing these interactions throughout the unit and will be asked to include these modern connections in their final blogs. This will encourage students once again to relate this ancient historical society and their beliefs and interactions to the modern world. During this lesson, I will have relatively little preparation to do. I will simply be directing my students to work together and share their knowledge of this topic before branching out into their individual work. It is important for the students to understand that this final lesson will be one that they themselves must be accountable for. I will however need to create self-evaluators and a final unit evaluator for each student so that they may inform me as to what they feel they have gained from this unit. Also, I will need to ask students to fill out a unit evaluator so that I may receive feedback on what they liked or disliked in this unit. Finally, while I will be using blogger.com for the technological portion of this lesson, the students have already set up their accounts and therefore I will not need to give them any sort of help in using this technology. However, I will need to review handouts with the students before setting them to work as this will help them understand my expectations and lead them to success in this final assessment. ---  Project Description Handout Wireless Internet Network LCD Projector Self Evaluation Sheet Unit Evaluation Sheet Their own notes and graphic organizers will be utilized for the writing of their final blogs. The students will enter the room and find the class set up with the usual two tables slid together in the back of the class, and two tables up front angled inward on the right and left hand side of the class. The teacher’s desk will be located in the back of the class, directly to the left of the two back tables. However, the teacher will be instruction primarily from the small desk in the font of the class which will hold the LCD projector that the teacher will use to display the various handouts. Welcome Hook (Unit Trivia Game) Lesson introduction Handout project guidelines Instruct Students to work with their peers at their given tables Students collect materials Handout product rubric along with the final self and unit evaluations Allow the tables to collaborate for 20-30 minutes Instruct Students to begin working independently on their blogs Check in with students Send students to their next class The students will enter the room and take their usual seats in the class setup. I will welcome all of the students and the briefly explain that we will be starting a new lesson that will be a final assessment of the Aztec Unit. I will instruct the students that they must first collaborate with their peers at their given tables to share information from this unit. It will also be necessary for me to instruct the students that after their discussions with their peers, it will then be time for them to create an individual blog that will commemorate all of their learning from the unit. To prepare them for this collaboration and independent work, I will play a brief trivia game where I will ask each student a key question or ask them to explain a key concept from this unit. This will get them in the mindset to start thinking about what they may want to include in their final products. I will tell them that they must give a synopsis of the history of the Aztec Empire that includes their cultural practices, their interactions with the Spanish invaders, the outcome of this conflict and the eventual demise of their culture altogether. Also, this blog must include the various modern day connections that each student has learned about over this unit. This will allow the students to understand and show that they know the major historical influences and enduring themes from this ancient culture and can relate them to our own modern era. Next, I will explain that in this lesson they will be asked to collaborate with the other students at their table and share their knowledge from all the previous lessons. This will allow them to get a varied look at the topics and concepts in this lesson and allow them to rethink what they learned. The students will be given a project guideline sheet so that they can reference what the final blog will need to have in order to be considered complete. Once the students are talking amongst their groups and collaborating with their research from the rest of the unit, I will be handing out the product rubric so that each table can see how they will be graded on their blog and can give each other ideas as to how they could setup this assessment. While sitting at their tables and collaborating with their peers, I will be reminding students that they should be talking about what they have learned and giving their peers ideas as to how they will setup their blogs and what kind of information they feel would be most important to include in their products. Each group will have their own table to use as their personal workspace which will allow minimal distractions between groups. I will make sure that each group understands that each individual is expected to help in the collaborative efforts at each table and I will be circulating the room to ensure that all are participating and no one or two students are doing all the work in any given group. This will also ensure that all may come to show that they understand the major enduring themes and historical influences by giving their groups input and contributing in these discussions. I will explain to the students that this lesson will be their final assessment of this unit and should be taken quite seriously. I will let them know that I expect them to give a synopsis of the history of the Aztec Empire and the modern day connections which have been covered during this unit. Finally, after about 20 minutes I will inform each student that it is now time to begin the writing of their blogs and to work independently. This will require the students to consult their own graphic organizers from the previous lessons and the product rubric for this assessment. The students will not be allowed to consult their peers during this time. To assess my students I will be giving them a final product rubric that will inform the students that they must follow the criteria listed in the rubric in order to achieve the highest mark possible. This will give my students a clear understanding of what I expect from them and what their product must entail. The final self evaluation will be explained as part of their individual grade which will be filled out by themselves and will require them to comment on their performance on this task and how they felt they worked on this. It is also important that the students understand that I will also be grading their individual productivity by observing how they work in their groups. At the end of class I will make a quick check in with each group to help them assess what is left for them to do in order to complete their blogs if they did not complete this during class time. If need be, individuals may only have to complete the remainder of the blog for homework, while other individuals may have to stay after school or come in during recess if they are behind with their research or are having any other difficulties. It is important for them to know that I will be prompt and available if they need any help or need to discuss an extension. Finally, once all the groups have been check up on, I will allow the students to pack up their belongings and head on to their next class.
 * Objectives: **
 * Maine **** Learning Results Alignment: **
 * Rationale: This learning result can give us a great starting point for understanding the themes and consequences that highlighted the interactions between these two cultures and understanding how these events changed the framework of the Aztec Empire so drastically.**
 * Assessment: **
 * Formative ** (Assessment for Learning)
 * *I will have the students go back and take a look at their graphic organizers from the past lessons and jot down different events in the history of the Aztec civilization that could help them get a holistic view of this ancient society. I would like them to consider how the cultural practices of the Aztecs eventually led to their conquest by the Spanish and eventual demise. **
 * Summative** (Assessment of Learning)
 * *To assess what the students have learned, each student will be placed in a group with 4 of their peers. They will collaborate with each other and discuss all the different events that have characterized the Aztecs that they have learned throughout this unit. After they have collaborated with their groups, they will write a reflective blog that will detail all that they have learned in an essay form. They will then need to share this blog with the class which will allow all the students to show what they have learned with their peers. They will fill out reflective self-evaluators after having presented their blogs, so as to judge how well they felt they did on their project and suggest improvements. Also, these self-evaluators will require the students to give feedback as to how they have grown and what they have learned throughout this unit. **
 * Integration: **
 * Differentiated Instruction: **
 * Strategies: **
 * Modifications/Accommodations: **
 * Extensions: **
 * Materials, Resources and Technology: **
 * Source for lesson plan and research: **
 * __ Maine __****__ Standards for Initial Teacher Certification and Rationale __**
 * // Standard 3 - Demonstrates a knowledge of the diverse ways in which students learn and develop by providing learning opportunities that support their intellectual, physical, emotional, social, and cultural development. //**
 * Rationale ** : This lesson meets the Maine Standards for Initial teacher certification by taking into a consideration that students learn in different ways and providing them with different learning opportunities. Students are asked to be creative and use their own personal discretion as to what kind of information they want to include in their final products. Students will also be collaborating with their classmates to collect information on the history of the Aztecs and get ideas on how they can create their final blogs. Students are also provided with a safe and comfortable learning environment. Any mistreatment or disrespectful attitudes will not be allowed and will be discouraged as they not only are disrespectful to others, but they also disrespect the learning environment.
 * // • Standard 4 - Plans instruction based upon knowledge of subject matter, students, curriculum goals, and learning and development theory. //**
 * Rationale ** : This lesson meets the Maine Standards for Initial teacher certification by providing students with the proper information they need to complete this project. Students have been learning about the history of the Aztecs throughout this unit and will be asked in this lesson to tie all of their knowledge together in one final blog. The students will also be made to think and make modern day connections to this topic by looking at the various examples that we have covered throughout the unit and applying as many as possible. This allows students to make a deeper connection to the subject matter by applying it to their every day life, while still reaching the goals set out in the MLR for this unit.
 * // • Standard 5 - Understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies and appropriate technology to meet students’ needs. //**
 * Rationale ** : This lesson meets the Maine Standards for Initial teacher certification by meeting the needs of eight different learning strategies. These eight strategies include linguistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalist, logical, and spatial. The students will also be utilizing a type II technology in the form of their blogger.com accounts which they will use to create their final product for this unit. This medium will allow students of all intelligences to incorporate a variety of sources that apply their own learning styles. Each student will be accommodated by being allowed free reign to decide how they want to setup their blogs according to their own learning style.
 * // • Standard 8 - Understands and uses a variety of formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and support the development of the learner. //**
 * Rationale ** : This lesson meets the Maine Standards for Initial teacher certification by assessing students in many different ways. Each individual will be expected to participate in the collaborative part of this lesson and will also be required to stay on task during their individual work. The students will be assessed on their work in groups through my observations as they talk amongst their groups. Also, for the assessment of their blogs, they will be able to reference the criteria on their product rubrics as well as getting feedback from their peers in the comment sections of their blogs. Students will be evaluated as an individual based on the quality of their blogs and the historical accuracy of their facts. Also, the application of their modern day connections in their blogs will be a key part of their individual products. The teacher will go through the rubric and assess whether or not each individual has hit the required benchmarks in order to receive a certain score on their blog. Students will be given this product rubric when they first begin and will be able to reference this in order to understand what will be necessary to receive the highest possible score.
 * Teaching and Learning Sequence: **
 * Agenda: **
 * Where, Why, What, Hook, Tailor: Intrapersonal, Linguistic and Visual (10 minutes) **
 * Equip, Explore, Rethink, Tailors: Visual, Linguistic, Intrapersonal (20 minutes) **
 * Explore, Experience, Rethink, Revise, Refine, Tailors: Interpersonal, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Intrapersonal, Visual, Linguistic, Naturalist. (45 minutes) **
 * Evaluate, Tailor: Interpersonal, Spatial, Visual, Linguistic (5 minutes) **