Mini-Teach
LESSON PLAN
Fingerspelling (15 min) GOALS/OBJECTIVES SWBAT produce and recognize handshapes to divide themselves into groups IOT analyze the benefits of using sign language to communicate. MATERIALS
PROCEDURES OPENER/DO NOW
BODY OF LESSON
CLOSURE
ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION Students will demonstrate their understanding of fingerspelling by accurately organizing themselves into groups without speaking. |
EXPLANATION AND REFLECTION
Revisiting my summer mini-teach, the first thing that stood out to me was how teacher-centered it was. For most of the lesson, I stood in front of the class modeling the handshapes and having students copy my demonstration. I was the expert with correct answers to disseminate, and the students’ role was to receive the knowledge I was transferring to them. Furthermore, the only way in which the students were asked to apply the skills they learned was by fingerspelling their name. If we are using fingerspelling as a tool for communication, then fingerspelling your name to other people who already know your name does not provide a very strong measure of whether or not you are able to use the tool successfully. With these observations in mind, when restructuring my lesson for the re-teach, I wanted to revise it so that (a) students took a more active role in the meaning-making process and (b) their understanding of fingerspelling could be applied to a task requiring actual two-way communication. To do this, I had students use a fingerspelling guide to sort themselves into assigned groups. Though the names of the groups themselves were random and arbitrary, the process required students to both produce their own handshapes and understand the handshapes produced by others. I also wanted to use my re-teach to deepen students’ empathy for the deaf community by drawing their attention to communication challenges faced by the hearing impaired and focusing on the ways in which sign language addresses these challenges. I did this by having students first play the sorting game without the aid of fingerspelling and then reflect on how their experience changed from one round to the next. Overall, I found these changes to be effective in making this lesson more engaging and meaningful than my summer mini-teach. I did much less talking myself, and throughout both rounds of the game, as well as in the follow-up discussion, students showed creativity and enthusiasm that was lacking in my video from the summer. |