Lesson+Plan+Analysis

My lesson was about the Pick-Sloan Plan and the political process that made the plan come to life. I started by lecturing about the different major floods of the area and how these floods affected the lives of the residents of the Missouri River. The class was small, only four students, so they had a lot of questions and it was easy to get them involved with the lecture. They seemed really interested in the topic. There are a number of things that I think about when planning a lesson. Due to the schedule at Vermillion High School the day you teach your lesson on determines the amount of class time you have. Monday through Wednesday all the classes meet but on Thursday and Friday only the odd or even periods meet. The class time can either be a 50 minute class or an hour and a half class period. I did not want to have too much information where I would run out of time but at the same time I did not want to have too little information where there was a lot of wasted time. Another thing I really started to think about when making a lesson plan was what level a learner the students were. At Vermillion there are a lot of lower level learners so that has to be taken into consideration of how in-depth you want your lesson to be. The most effective part of my lesson I felt was when I showed the students how the Missouri River changed after the Flood of 1881. I had maps that showed how the channel changed and where it used to be and also a map that imposed Lewis and Clarks map onto another map to show what the river looked like when they were here and how it looks now. It was very easy to get the students involved with the maps because there were only four of them so I could have them stand around a desk and really get a good look at the maps. I followed pretty close to my lesson plan because I tried to make it somewhat entertaining through my slides since the subject is not that exciting especially when getting to the legislation part. There was also a short video I wanted to show at the end of the class so I did not have a lot of time to deviate and add other material. Overall the length of the class and the length of the lecture were pretty close. The class ended in the middle of the video but the students were able to see enough of the video to achieve my goal of showing it. My strengths as a teacher are that I am able to relate the students and try to make learning fun. I know a lot of students do not find history interesting and struggle with why they should learn it. I believe I can present the information in a fun interactive way especially with this topic.
 * Analysis of Pick-Sloan Lesson Plan**