Journal Entry #14

Thursday November 20, 2008
Today I continued math lesson and taught the students how to change mixed numbers back into improper fractions. I was so excited because I felt like everyone understood the concept! Even the student who never turns in his work and is always one step behind finished 15 of the 20 problems answering them all correctly.

This afternoon was a big two hour POI lesson that I planned on propaganda. Dan came to observe during this time. I was given the central idea that there are “different representations of the truth.” I was to incorporate this idea with our inquiry unit on conflict. I decided that I would talk about propaganda/advertising and persuasion. As an introduction to the lesson I showed an Ellen clip that I found on YouTube. Here is the link if you are interested in watching it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPruPDhXas4. It was pretty funny and showed some ridiculous infomercial products. I transitioned from this video into my lesson by saying. “I know some of these products were pretty silly, but the sad thing is that some of these products sell, what strategies do the companies use to persuade people to buy them?” We talked about how the commercials make it seem like you need the product, or the product makes your life easier, or there will be a reward or price cut if you order soon. Our next activity included looking at advertisements that I created. I wanted specific examples of propaganda techniques and these were very hard to find on the internet so I created my own. The students looked at about fifteen ads and had to try and match the picture with a specific technique without going over the definitions. This was my attempt to create a lesson of inquiry. The students had to explore the photos and come up with the correct technique using common and prior knowledge. I did not stand at the front of the classroom, show them a picture and give them the definition. My goal was to create a more student-centered lesson instead of teacher-centered.

Some of my pictures had facts and figures to persuade the audience – an ipod with a caption that said, “Last year, 27 million ipods were sold in the US alone.” I found some humorous ads that caught my eye; such as a fat giraffe with the caption, “Proof a vegetarian diet is bad for you.” I found a picture of a Cheerios box that said, “Cheerios May Reduce Your Cholesterol!” This strategy reveals a hidden fear. I had a picture of converse tennis shoes and added the caption, “just your every day shoe…” to appeal to the plain folk. You get the idea.

The kids had a lot of fun looking at the ads and working with their table mates trying to figure out which picture fit with a specific technique. After they had time to work individually we went over the pictures and strategies as a whole class. This activity took up the first hour of the lesson.

For the second hour of the lesson I transitioned into looking at WWII propaganda posters. I found a really good website that had war posters from six different countries Germany, Russia, England, Japan, Italy, and the US. We looked at the war posters together on a PPT and the students tried to identify different propaganda techniques that the artist was using during the specific time of “conflict,” WWII. I also emphasized that the posters from the different countries displayed different “representations of the truth.” The students came to the conclusion that the messages on the posters from the six countries were very different. They also noted that posters seen in Germany, Japan, and Italy (Axes) would definitely not be seen in England of the US (Allies).

After the PPT I asked the students to create their own propaganda posters using a strategy that we talked about in the lesson. I am interested to see how the posters turn out. Maybe I will be able to take a picture of some of the student’s posters and post them on a future blog entry.

Dan thought the lesson went really well and back at home we had a good conversation about strengths and areas of improvement.

After a long day of teaching I went to the PE building and changed for football practice. I think I have permanently gotten sucked in to helping Mireille with her once a week club team. I was a lot of fun today though because the kids were working on passing in a square formation and following their pass and I ran around all of the groups and made sure they were still moving their feet. I don’t understand much about football (soccer) but I do understand the importance of moving your feet. The student would pass the ball and then stand there flat footed. I got all 5 groups to continuously be moving their feet throughout the drill and would whistle at them across the pitch if I saw they had stopped hahah, in no time they will be doing push ups for me too =]. Ha, Mireille loved it, she said that they never work that hard for her and that she’s not letting me leave Spain.

After football practice I got a ride back home with Sam and Mireille and I started cooking dinner. I said on Wednesday night that I would cook dinner for the entire house including Dan, yikes this could be dangerous. BUT…actually I thought it turned out pretty good considering there is not a nearby market to get needed ingredients, I am using a Spanish kitchen, pans that look like they are from WWI, a Celsius oven, and translating cooking directions from Spanish to English. I made curry chicken, with curry rice, and mixed vegetables. Dan provided the desert, Hagen Dais from the Carrefour. After an extremely long day, I lesson planned for Friday and went to bed.