American History Mini Lesson

The Mini Lesson can be accessed at www.americanhistories.org

American History Mini-Lesson

Title: The American Revolution

Presentation: https://www.americanhistories.org/about-5

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Issue: Some of the students in the class are struggling with the concepts related to the causes of the American Revolution and understanding the events which pre-dated and/or occurred prior to the American Revolution. This is part of a curriculum-based assessment, which although modified due to student IEP’s, remains a district-wide and state-level requirement.

Student Objective: To help students understand the events which contributed to the conflict which eventually became the American Revolution. Students will, after viewing the visual chronological media, to provide a key event and a key date that contributed to the American Revolution.

Targeted Concept: Understanding the events which caused the conflict which became the American Revolution. This is part of curriculum-based assessment required at the district and state level.

Concept Design: Students who have struggled with the website and assignments and classroom guided lessons throughout the blended learning unit previous utilized will have the entirety of the lesson condensed into a video platform which can be viewed daily to help support recall and facilitate the processing of events and key dates. The font is specific to how the students process written language, rather than utilizing block letters, more artistic font was used. Music is included to immerse and evoke emotion and connect text to sound. Images are also incorporated to connect imagery to events which are guided by the text. With repetition, the students should be able to begin recalling dates and key events.

Lesson and Strategy: (The entire lesson is a visual graphic organizer, as it is a visual chronological presentation). The lesson will be taught by engaging the students in a brief discussion in which the expectations are explained that they need to be able to describe one event that caused the American Revolution. In addition to this, as the goal is to effectively facilitate the ability to recall events, the students should be able to provide a date to an event. The hypothesis relied upon is that through this specific visual chronological intervention, students will be able to recall more than one event and more than one key date because of repeated exposure to the content. The lesson is a 10-minute video lesson which guides the students through the events which caused the American Revolution. The students are then prompted to discuss the answers at the end.

There is no written portion for this lesson plan aside from the Blended Learning Unit already created, and the assignments attached. This specific lesson relies solely upon the visual chronological video intervention and verbal discussion points to engage the students in the process of learning and recalling based upon repeated exposure to the material in the same platform (video/audio). This lesson was created as a unique method of creatively engaging a specific student population in an effective environment for learning. There is no video of me teaching this lesson as it is self-taught by the media created to guide the students through the key events. This is the enhancement and the presentation method.