Hannah Ruth Pond

Lesson Plan Reflection

“Steps to the American Revolution”

Standard 2 Demonstrate an understanding of how South Carolinians and Americans created a
revolutionary form of government during the period of 1757– 1815.
Indicator 8.2.CE Explain the economic, political, and social factors surrounding the American
Revolution.

This lesson focused on the “road to revolution” and the various taxes enacted on the colonists.
My students reflected on the “I can” statements that included: I can explain the economic social
and political factors of the American Revolution and I can analyze and interpret a political
cartoon. The lesson itself was a mini lesson on the sugar act and the stamp act as well as the
Sons of Liberty. This lesson was a pretty shallow dive into each of these topics and more
focused on the political cartoon analysis.
I don’t think I would say my lesson was successful. My students met their first “I can”
statement, but not the second one. My students did well on their exit slip aligned with the first I
can, but the worksheets with the primary source analysis showed me more reinforcement is
needed in this area. I suppose that this was formative so I could go back and address where this
objective was not met. I don’t think it was a total flop in that my students were engaged, they
just did not achieve the lesson objectives.
I think that my students responded well to my direct instruction portion of the lesson. They were
engaged in the PearDeck questions and were answering them correctly along the way letting me
know that they were retaining and understanding the content. My students also performed well
on the exit slip that was related to the direct instruction portion of the assignment. My students
responded especially well to the hook I planned. Classroom management was pretty good
overall. There are typically not many behavioral concerns in this class. As for the primary
source analysis portion, students were a little rowdy in the transition to their partners which made
me lose some instructional time. I also found that they were more off topic than I expected. I
think I attribute this to them not engaging in partner work often. They are more comfortable
with direct instruction in that class because that is mostly what my coaching teacher does.
Teaching this lesson, I felt a little over planned. I underestimated how long it would take
students to properly analyze their political cartoon and primary text. I really wanted each student
to engage with a political cartoon and a newspaper article/letter so they could practice both skills,
but timing did not work out. As class periods went on I ended up scrapping doing both and
having students just do one or the other by the end of class. I was pretty disappointed because
the analysis wasn’t just something I had planned “just in case” but it was a core part of my lesson
plan that I feel was not executed as well as I wanted it to be. I was confident in my knowledge
of the content but started to feel a little shaky when things were not lining up or being executed
like I thought they would. I certainly felt prepared, but then had trouble deciding what to take out
when I realized my students needed more time.
If I were to do this lesson again, I would honestly make it two class periods. The first-class
period would be content heavy, and a little more direct instruction related to the road to
revolution and be accompanied by a workshop on annotating and analyzing primary sources.
The next class period would be the same folder activity as planned, but students would be able to
analyze and interact with multiple kinds of primary sources related to the revolution. I think that
timing was the biggest flaw in my original lesson.
If I was a classroom teacher or even could follow up the next day, I think that I would want to do
a mini lesson on analyzing and interpreting different types of sources. When reviewing the
worksheets that I gave students to help them with their analysis I noticed that they were very
literal with their interpretations and did not quite make the historical connections I was
expecting. I do think that this is because they do not engage with these types of sources with my
coaching teacher. I think that following up this lesson with a mini lesson on annotating and
reviewing primary sources and then allowing more time—my students would better be able to
interpret the meaning and historical importance of the documents.