Today at Clay-Battelle I finished up a 3-day lesson with my 11th graders on the assembly line and Henry Ford. Being the 2nd week of school, I felt it important to dive into material on Monday. With my 11th grade classes, I conducted a lecture on the Progressive Era on Monday. We unpacked the 4 goals of the Progressive Era: building social welfare programs, promoting moral development, passing economic reform, and fostering efficiency. With fostering efficiency we focused on scientific management, and Henry Ford's assembly line.
About half of my students in my 8th period class attend M-Tech in the morning and take classes that have to do with welding, computers, etc. and they took an interest in discussing the assembly line. After the lecture, I taught them what they would be making in their own assembly line: an origami star. I divided them into teams and they divided the steps of creating this origami star into 6-8 steps, and divided out the steps into their own personal "job". I told them the rules of the star factory, that it would be run like Henry Ford's own factory: there would be no talking or sitting for the entire period. On Tuesday when they came into class they reported to their stations and they began on their work. Throughout all of my classes only one student was "fired" due to talking. At the end of each period I collected all of the students' stars and waste.
On Wednesday when my 11th graders came in to class we did an economics lesson on their waste and profit. Overall, the students enjoyed the lesson and grasped the main idea of fostering efficiency in the Progressive Era.
With my 9th grade class we have been working on the Neolithic and Paleolithic period, and my students took notes on the 1st section of their text on Monday. We explored this prehistoric time throughout the rest of the week through pictures, cave paintings, readings, and a 10 minutes video on Neanderthals.
My goal for teaching is to have all of my lessons planned for the following week by Thursday of each week.
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