Medieval Period Lesson Analysis

I presented my lesson on the Medieval Period on December 11th in Ms. Payne's 3rd Period AVID Class.  There were roughly 10 students present, the same students I conducted my Pre-Assessment with on Monday.

During the Pre-Assessment/Warm Up Activity, the students filled out a KWL chart.  When asked what they "know" about the period, they discussed Old English generally, monarchies, emperor's, torturing and feudal warfare.  Most students seemed to have a very surface level of knowledge on each of these concepts, so I added them to my lesson plan to elaborate.  When asked what they would like to learn, students listed the following topics: Old English origins, Crime and Punishment, clothing, food, women's role in the time period, diseases and uprisings.

I modified my lesson to cover each of these aspects thoroughly, which I think the student's really liked.  They knew what they would be learning for the day and felt like they had some control on the content that was covered.  It also seemed to help keep their attention throughout the PowerPoint Presentation.

We started with the clip from Game of Thrones, which started the conversation on Monarchies and the rise of Feudalism.  I also inserted a video into my PowerPoint titled "25 reasons you don't want to live in the Middle Ages".  This video was a hit!  After 2 or 3 points, I paused the video to discuss and gauge reactions of the students.  This sparked a lot of conversation and debate around some of the more shocking differences in the culture of that period and today. The PowerPoint/Video took about 45-50 minutes due to the discussion.  The students used the last remaining minutes of class to perform their post-assessment.

My ongoing assessment originally to monitor students and give them a participation grade, however I decided to print out the PowerPoint with added blanks for the students to work through.  In AVID, they are working on their writing skills, so I thought this would be a great way to incorporate that into the lesson.  Students turned in this handout at the end of class with their names on it, and after review, I noticed that most students filled out each section without missing anything.

My Post-Assessment was originally a handout, but since I had modified my ongoing assessment to a handout, I decided to modify my Post-Assessment to a reflection instead--incorporating their writing skills again.  The students were asked to reflect on the most interesting thing they learned on the Middle Ages in one paragraph (due to time restraints).  Overall, the student's reflections accurately represented material that was covered that day.

What did I learn?
Students are actually pretty excited to learn about new things, however there will always be a few students that would prefer to have offline discussions.  These students can distract the entire class and get you off track for 5-10 minutes before you can move on.  Also, I learned that I need to build discussion time into my lesson planning, to allow for a better timed lesson.

What would I change?
I would take out the Game of Thrones video simply because students seemed to think this was testable data.  They also seemed to take the points in the video as fact instead of a general representative of monarchs.

What did I enjoy?
I loved the discussion! As we moved through the lesson, students were getting very worked up about how the serfs were treated and the fact that they no rights.  They began to understand how many rights and privileges we have today; including some simple ones that we take for granted, like free speech.  Most of the students would get frustrated and say "why didn't they just overthrow the king" or "why would they work for free? I would just say no".  Realizing that the people of this time did not have choice really frustrated the students and made for great discussion.