Responses+to+the+Unit

=Student Reactions and Responses=

Throughout the unit my students seemed to respond quite well to the material that was being taught. There is a wealth of cultural diversity within my school and I found that my lessons, which were geared towards many of the cultures within my school, were received quite well. I found that my students loved talking about their home lives and it was obvious to see that there was some very clear ownership of the material. This was seen quite clearly in my two capstone assignments: the culture brochure and the restaurant creation activity. When teaching is geared towards the students themselves they tend to be more eager to make large gains towards mastery of the material.

Breaking up Instruction
It has become obvious that my students require a great amount of differentiated instruction. When planning the unit I wanted to touch upon two very different teaching ideals. The first was that I would teach the material with numerous teaching strategies. I tried to include a fair amount of lecture, discussion, and project creation. My second goal was to break my classroom time into various segments. It has become obvious that my seventh grade students need to change directions every fifteen to twenty minutes. If they do not, I have found that they become restless and fail to properly take in the content being taught. During this unit, when I followed these two goals, I found that my students were more engaged and were able to construct a greater understanding from the lessons.

=Responses from the School Community=

Responses from Students
Overall my students seemed to really enjoy this unit. Much of the unit revolved around my students and the cultures that make my classroom so unique. Throughout the unit I heard students say, "Mr. D., I really like talking about Iraq" or "Mr. D. it's really cool that I can pick my home country for my project." Many of the positive reactions that came from my students revolved around the two major capstone projects that we completed in class. For each of these projects I allowed my students to pick their own country's to analyze. My students really seemed to enjoy the fact that they could discuss their home country.

At the end of the unit many of my students seemed to have gained a strong understanding of concept of culture. This theme, which was foreign to most students before this unit, is sometimes difficult for young students to conceptualize. I feel that by linking this material back to their home lives my student's commanded a sense of ownership over the material. This ownership helped to construct a deeper understanding of the material for many of my students.

Responses from Parents
Responses from my student's parents were overwhelmingly good. This unit had the luxury of falling directly before my first set of student conferences. Numerous times throughout my conferences I was asked by parents exactly why we were discussing certain aspects of the unit (particularly the religion portion). After giving these parents my rationale I received numerous comments stating how happy they were that we were teaching this material to their students. One particular parent stated that, "I really wished we had been taught this material in school- It would have made life a lot easier."

The responses that I received from parents helped me to conclude that my students were taking to heart much of the material that we were learning. If it had not made such an impact on my students they would not have gone home and discussed the material with their parents. One of the main goals that I have when teaching my course is that my students will be able to hold a conversation with an adult about the material. The responses that I received from my parents lead me to believe that this happened during my unit.

=Overall Positive Reactions=

There were numerous positive reactions throughout my unit. They are as follows:


 * A Strong Intro-** A good unit needs a strong introduction. In this unit I chose to start my students with a two day project. Prior to the beginning of the unit my students had almost no knowledge about what we were going to talk about. This was by design. I really wanted my students to start thinking about the real world and the various cultural items that are present every day. When debriefing the project I made sure to discuss all of the various components that relate back to an individual group's culture. This seemed to be an extremely effective way of starting out the unit. My students began the unit with some personal ownership over the material.


 * Religion Discussion Opens Eyes-** The religion portion of this unit was meant to be an introduction into the five major world religions. Prior to this unit I found that many of my students had a very limited view of the differences between various religions. Multiple times since this unit was taught I was able to have conversations with my students about the differences between religions around the world. It is obvious that my students are more aware and accepting of the differences in beliefs and customs of the various world religions.


 * Culture Brochures Allow for In Depth Analysis-** This unit is focused on teaching students the basics of how culture affects every individual on earth. The culture brochure that my student's created was meant to be a final assessment that helped students answer the unit's essential question, "What is Culture?" This project allowed my students to think about this question in the context of an individual country. Giving the students the option of picking whatever country they wanted enticed them to really get involved in the material itself.

=Overall Negative Reactions=

There were a few things that could have been improved upon throughout my unit. They are as follows:


 * Activities Must be Scaffolded Very Well-** In a seventh grade classroom, activities need to be laid out extremely well. In this unit I found this to be exceptionally true. During many of my lessons and activities I asked my students to perform various tasks. I assumed that when I told students to take notes on my statements they would simply follow suit. This, however, is not the case. While my religion activity opened up many students' eyes, it was run quite poorly. When giving my instructions to my students I was sometimes vague and left much room for interpretation. In doing so I created a situation where my student's had to ask a huge amount of questions in order to complete the task that I was assigning them. This unanticipated problem caused many of my students to act out. While certain students were asking questions other students became bored and talked to their peers. Throughout the day I modified my instruction and relayed more in depth instructions from the very beginning. The very last hour of this religion activity was quite pleasant. By giving my students all of my expectations ahead of time I created a sense of structure that my students need.


 * Activities Take More Time than Expected-** Throughout this unit I found that activities almost always take more time than expected. The biggest problem that I had this unit was that I did not account for this when planning my lessons. I had imagined that each lesson and activity would flow exceptionally well. Lessons tended to take longer than expected and I was forced to rush through some of the material I had planned. Throughout the year we will thankfully touch some of these concepts again and I will be able to reteach some of the material that my students did not adequately learn.


 * Students Need to Spend Time Revisiting Material-** In order to gain a full understanding of a concept or idea students need to be constantly reminded of the material being taught. Throughout my unit I did not include enough time to revisit much of the material that we discussed in the earlier portions of the unit. At the end of the unit I gave my students a small quiz to test their knowledge and found that many students could not decipher some of the basic concepts that we discussed. If I were to teach this unit in the future I would make sure to discuss concepts multiple times in a variety of ways.