Reflection on Microteaching II: Indirect Instruction and UbD

What went well: I think that my execution of my lesson as a UbD lesson was great. I started with my essential question and linked it to an enduring understanding. My essential question was, "What is history, and what does an historian do?" My main objective and enduring understanding was that history is an argument, and it can be argued from many different perspectives, one being the perspective of "women's history."
After explaining what my classmates could expect to learn from the lesson, I provided some pre-reading ideas as I passed out excerpts from primary sources from the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. My pre-reading ideas were to remember the genders' of the authors of each source (3 men and one woman), and my "during-reading" instructions were to try to think of ways that Enlightenment thinking supported women's rights, and ways that Enlightenment thinking supported women's inferiority. I also had an "after reading" activity, where after each excerpt, students had to write one-2 sentences describing what the excerpt was saying.
An underlying objective of this lesson was to have students use primary sources to argue whether the Enlightenment supported women's rights or did not support women's rights, and the evidence of this objective being met was through a facilitated class discussion after the students read through the excerpts.
I think that the class discussion went extremely well. There was good participation from everyone, and everyone was using the primary sources to defend their arguments. Some students were more willing to argue than others, so I prompted students less apt to talk with different points to argue by saying this like "Do you think....?" This was a good way to get everyone talking because soon everyone was engaging in a good historical argument. The class discussion showed me that the students were able to understand the primary source material, and it also showed me that the students were able to support their arguments with the sources ("Well, Voltaire said this, which supports what Rousseau said here." "But what about Condorcet?") I believe that the lesson was engaging based solely on the discussion.
After I was satisfied with the depth of the discussion about the Enlightenment thinking and women's equality, I turned again to my Essential Question and Enduring Understanding when I asked students to tell me whether or not they agreed or disagreed with the concept of women's history as a means to look at the past. My classmates felt that by approaching the Enlightenment from the perspective of women's history, they did have to talk about men, politics, and social issues, while when they approached history from a traditional perspective they did not have to talk about women. Two classmates expressed that they were initially skeptical about the idea of women's history, but now they saw that it could work in most situations. When discussing the role of women's history, most of my classmates used the word "important" to describe the male-centered traditional study of history. I used this to relate back to the essential questions of "what is history and what does an historian do?" I explained how historians decide what is important, and most historians have traditionally felt that men in history were more important. History is a point of view, and history is an argument. I feel like this lesson was a good example of indirect instruction as well as UbD.
Time was manages appropriately, and I believe I handled my distracting mannerisms in this lesson more than I did in my first microteaching lesson. I tried to follow the 4 second wait time consciously, and I feel like that was a strength to classroom management until I noticed some of my peers speaking more than others, when I then intervened by directing questions to specific people. This experience influenced my professional identity by reinforcing what kind of history teacher I want to be. I don't want to teach history as a list of irrefutable facts, but rather, I want to teach history as an argument fueled by many different perspectives that all draw evidence from primary sources. The class discussion showed how different people can read the same documents and have different arguments about them, and use the same sources to argue different things. Overall, I think the lesson went really well.

10&11

I really like the idea of extended inquiry for reading and units, especially applied to the study of history.  I feel like the big picture can be easily lost in the slew of names and dates that are associated with teaching and learning history, while broader ideas like how the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century translates into todays world or how ideas of freedom evolved pre and post slavery can get lost. It is important to me that I teach my students how the past informs the present, and this fits neatly into the extended inquiry.  I also love the idea of setting up the context and doing pre-reading exercises.  For example, a pre-reading exercise could be students writing what a typical day for them looks like before they read about everyday life in colonial America - that way they will be able to compare the past and the present in a personal way.
I think it is so important for students reading about history (or anything for that matter) to be able to picture what they are reading about in their minds.  It makes reading more enjoyable and easier to comprehend.  It also makes transferring information easier.  For example, if students are able to picture an event like Pickett's Charge, then they will be able to get a more in-depth understanding of different sources all detailing the event.  I never thought of this as a skill that needed to or could be taught, but it makes sense that it should and could be taught.  I guess sometimes it comes naturally to people, but some students need help in developing that skill like anything else.