John Carlson

09/20/2021
EDUC 450
MTV Reflection

I felt the way the class went in presenting the information and structure of the tools as

very beneficial. I believe my lesson was effective in introducing the structure of the Chalk Tool. I

believe that I was able to follow the timeline given and present the information in a concise way.

There are many aspects of this lesson that I was proud of and benefitted from speaking in front of

my peers. There are also parts of the lesson that I feel I could have done better to relay the

effectiveness of Chalk Talks. First, I think of the questions I used in my activity. They were all

related to the strategy itself. I wish I had done the assignment geared towards my content area of

Social Studies. I feel this would have given me valuable practice in using the tool. However, I

do feel that the questions I used were helpful for my peers to understand the strategy. Next, I

think I would like to ensure I have the learning targets clearly presented in my visual. Many of

my peers did this with their strategies and I believe helps to clearly lay a path for the lesson.

This is an aspect of my visual presentation that I feel could have been improved to help my

students.

I think that the Chalk Talk strategy can be very beneficial in a Social Studies classroom

for a variety of ways. It could be used to help introduce the students to a sensitive topic that may

spark debate in the classroom. Chalk Talk will allow for the students to engage in such an

activity and argue their point of view without the risk associated with debate. A topic that it can

be used for is the moral stance of Japanese internment camps during WWII. I think this tool

could also be used for a review in Social Studies. It will allow for the teacher to ask questions

they feel students may be struggling with and ask the students what aspects of the unit they

struggled with most.

 There were many strategies presented in class that I feel could be extremely beneficial in

Social studies classrooms. There are many that help to work in different ways and could fit into

my classroom very well. The one that stood out to me was the Claim-Support-Question strategy.

I believe this strategy is beneficial in Social Studies classrooms and can be used multiple ways. I

think of having the students use this strategy when reading a primary source that deals with a

certain event. It allows the students to engage deeper with the text, support what they believe,

and ask the questions that may be confusing them. It can also be used to help students for the

beginning of an essay assignment. It will allow them to construct a brief understanding of what

their topic is and see what aspect of the event they want to explore. I think this strategy can be

used in Social Studies classrooms to help make the students' learning visible to the teacher.

To assess how the students have done using the Claim-Support-Question strategy

teachers can look at it in a couple of different ways. First, I believe it can be a participation

assignment to see how the students are engaging with a text. It can also be graded, solely looking

for the evidence students use to support their claim. This is the main skill I believe this strategy

relays and should be focused on during assessment. Students should be able to support their

claims and draw from the text to do so. I think that these are the two reasonable ways teachers

can assess student learning by using this strategy.

An example of using this strategy in the classroom would be to have the students engage

with the source “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair. I would ask the students to make a claim about

worker conditions during the industrial revolution and support this with evidence. As the teacher,

I could then view how they supported their claim, engaged with the source, and questions they

may have formed from the reading. This is just one example of the Claim-Support-Question

strategy in the classroom.