Sequencing the Facts

Defining 'sequence'.

Today Brittney, Liz, and I presented our mini current event lesson to the class. We chose to implement the method of Sequencing the Facts. Our goal was to teach how to organize information and events in the order which they occurred, at a fifth grade level.

I think that the lesson went smoothly and we clearly explained the task at hand. Difficulty in the lesson began after the students finished putting the sentences in the order they believed to be correct. We had expected students to vary in their interpretations; however, due to time restraint, it was difficult to address these differences. It would take a great amount of time to have students fully justify the conclusions they made based on the way they read the article. In order to make up for this imbalance, I explained that we tried to create the sentences in a way that forced students to read and comprehend the article. There was no intention of tricking students.

Working together.

Sequencing the facts.

 

Some students did not appreciate that we had not gone over the article prior to beginning the activity. Since we were crunched for time, this was not possible. If we were to change the presentation, we would have definitely read the article as a whole class. Students could then take turns reading the article to be sure that they are all on track and staying together. I had mistakenly underestimated the importance of this aspect of the lesson, as all of the sentences being used in the activity were in the first two paragraphs.

The full class application slide that we created holds true after we have implemented this lesson in a short, 10 minute lesson. We would have modeled the activity, given different articles, and allow summarization of the article. One suggestion from a student in class that I enjoyed was one regarding competition. Students can be given the same article and can be broken up into smaller groups so that the activity can be a race to the finish. This would give students more motivation to read the article and complete the activity.

Teaching to my peers was a great experience. I love this method of teaching current events and could implement this lesson in an actual classroom. It was great that I was able to practice this lesson with my classmates and future teachers. This way, I know what I can fix about my teaching to be better prepared for when I use this lesson with a class of fifth graders. I enjoyed receiving their feedback and appreciated the honesty. Their feedback allows me to improve, which is what I aim to do.

Presenting the final products.

Here is the link to our current event lesson.

Here is the link to our current event presentation.