Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Voices

Take a few moments to sketch out a lesson idea in which you incorporate student voice in your classroom, particularly by using Eduardo Galeano's Mirrors or Howard Zinn's Voices of a People's History of the United States.

2 comments:

Ben said...

In my lesson on the atomic bombs I want to try to bring out student voice at both the beginning and end of the lesson.

When the kids come in I'm going to ask them to answer the question "Should the United States have dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?" on a piece of paper, along with a 1-2 sentence explanation of their reasoning behind their answer. Then at the end of class, after I've taught the lesson and showed them both Truman's justification for why he made the decision to drop the bomb and parts of the Yamaoka Michiko and USSBS documents from the Zinn reader (pages 363-373)I want to revisit the question and have students share and discuss their answers and reasoning. I'm also interested in seeing if any students change their answer between the beginning and end of class.

awpshowgirl said...

I think it would be good to us mirrors if you were having students working on analysis. You could have a section for the students to read, then ask them what common themes they see between them. You can take that further and discuss if those themes and issues are still present today and why or why not. The one one women and their treatment would even work as an intro to w omen's suffrage. Mirrors could be used to paint a backdrop for the struggles women have faced throughout history.