Vocabulary Lesson for Unit Reflection

In my Literacy in a Middle/High School course, we prepared a 15 minute vocabulary lesson based off of our chosen units to teach for the duration of the semester. The unit I have chosen to teach is a US Civil War and Reconstruction Era unit, and for the vocabulary lesson, I chose to examine the terms ‘scalawags’ and ‘carpetbaggers’, in context with the Reconstruction era. To teach these terms, I began the lesson with a nearpod slide asking my classmates, in general, if they have ever heard of either of the words before. After responses came in, we looked at a reading from history.com titled “What are the difference between a carpetbagger and a scalawag?”. My classmates took turns reading passages aloud from the article. We then briefly discussed the terms, basically creating a solid definition and differentiation with the two words. I then passed out a song from 1868 written by T.E. Garrett called “The Carpetbagger Song”. We first looked at the cover page of the song as a class to see if the drawing conveyed a meaning of the term carpetbagger. After a quick discussion, I had planned on simply reading over the lyrics to the song, but one of my classmates was quick to volunteer to sing along to the song. Following the song, I asked a few discussion questions about the song to my classmates. To finish the lesson and to check for understanding, I asked my classmates to answer a nearpod slide asking them to write down one similarity and one difference between a carpetbagger and a scalawag in the Reconsturction Era. My lesson plan to this vocabulary unit is linked below.

Lesson Plan for Vocabulary Unit

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11hFd-HtCiCGsRP4ELHuUK0MpHPc6kBsA5HT6E0LNTT0/edit?usp=sharing

In my view, this vocabulary lesson adequately addressed Performance Criterion 5.1: Engage Learners and 5.2: Integrate Cross-Disciplinary Skills. To engage my classmates in the vocabulary lesson, I presented them with two sources, one primary and one secondary. I felt as if it was appropriate to review the secondary source first in order to ground a basic understanding of the two terms.  To present the primary source, I printed out two copies of the lyrics, with one copy being the original lyrics written in music format, as well as an easier copy to read of the lyrics in case they were unfamiliar with reading music. Through analyzing the song, the students were able to gain context for the vocabulary words by examining both the cover page and the meaning of the lyrics. As I mentioned previously, I had originally planned to simply review the lyrics, but one of my classmates asked to attempt to sing along, so this shows me that my classmates were engaged and appearing to have fun with the vocabulary lesson.  I also feel as if this is cross-disciplinary with Language Arts because throughout the lesson, students were given two types of texts differing in styles and asked to read them aloud to the class. Throughout the lesson, my classmates were gaining an understanding through examining texts and class discussions.

The first reason I chose these two words to explore more in depth is because both of these terms arose out of differing perspectives between Southern democrats and those who supported the Reconstruction efforts. I feel as if it is important for students to understand why and how negative terms and labels for groups of people come about, and why Southern democrats may have felt negatively towards Northerners coming to the South and Southerners siding with the Union. I also felt like it was important to discuss and learn these terms because throughout history, and in general, carpetbagger carries a general meaning and it is important to discuss the context of the word as it pertains to this era of history. Another reason why I feel it is important to cover these terms for my unit is because the final performance assessment is individual profile project where students will in depthly research an individual from the US Civil War and Reconstruction Era and they will be writing their ‘mock diary’. Some students in the class may be interested in doing their project on an individual who was influential in the Reconstruction efforts, so it will be important for these students to realize there was a difference of opinion among Reconstruction efforts in the South and the negatives labels these individuals had due to a difference of opinion and perspective.

From this vocabulary assignment, I have gained insight about the progress I am making with my presence and pose while teaching, as well as continuing to learn about how to teach vocabulary within my content area. In regards to my teacher presence in front of a classroom, I have been focusing on enunciating my words better and not trying to rush my thoughts to the students. After reviewing my recording, I do feel as if I am improving on making my voice more clear for students to understand and did not seem to find any place where I felt rushed. One area that I do still need to improve on is being more prepared on what discussion questions I should ask when I turn to the students for answers. In this video, I believe I ask relevant discussion questions to the readings we reviewed, but do not feel that these questions provided the understanding I had originally intended for. Moving forward, this forces me to think about how important it is for myself as the teacher to plan backwards, starting with what I want students to know and understand at the end of the lesson, and planning more concise discussion questions around those concepts. Although I do wish I had worded and guided our discussion a little differently, I still do feel as if my classmates learned the vocabulary words because they all provided sensible answers to the formative assessment at the end of the lesson. Teaching vocabulary in history or social studies is unique because each area of study and each era within that area of study has vocabulary that is particularly relevant to that moment, and understanding the vocabulary is part of understanding the historical big ideas. Through this vocabulary lesson, I learned it was effective to find analyze a primary source because it creates an engaging and hopefully memorable experience for the student. If they can remember a few words to the song or have an image of the cover page in their head, they will always remember these two terms while continuing their work in the unit. In regards to teaching vocabulary in the future, I hope to provide more unique and engaging formative assessments to check for learning. In my last few teaching episodes, I feel as if I am only providing Nearpod formative assessments, so I hope to look into other ways to formatively check for understanding of ideas, and in particular to literacy, vocabulary.