Last week, on Friday, October 2, 2015, Carole Nickolai, our Assistant Principal of Academics, dropped in for an observation of part of my 5* World History 2 class. Her write-up is below:

Observation Notes:
Eric is just finishing up presenting characteristics of a totalitarian regime with elements illustrated by a colorful graphic organizer projected for the class.  He introduces the “Build a totalitarian regime” activity during which students will meet in their country groups and create a name, flag, and guidelines for maintaining totalitarian power.  Students group up, and Eric gives different roles (1 person is the flag-researcher, 1 person is the illustrator, etc).  Each group has a particular focus (Media, maintaining order, etc). Students work on the assignment with high energy.
Commendations:
Activity worked really well and fostered high student engagement. It provided a creative way for students to show their understanding of the elements of totalitarianism.  Students collaborated well and shared ideas, each student taking on an individual role.  Taking on the guise of an “evil dictator” is perfect developmentally for sophomores.  The country groups reflect establishment of good routines from the start of the course.
Suggestions:
Maybe because this was last period of the day, students had a high degree of energy.  It might be helpful to go over all the instructions with the class before splitting into groups.  I know that you made the judgment call to capitalize on the high motivation, and that is fine.  This suggestion would be mostly for the future.  You also might want to give students some time constraints, i.e., you have 15 minutes for this and then display a timer to help them keep focused.  I know how challenging it can be with a new prep as you mentioned part of the work is staying a few days ahead of the kids.  You are doing a fantastic job - continue great work!

I was surprised that the write-up didn’t emphasize the “Suggestions” more because I didn’t feel that the activity went very well. As part of our discussion of post-Communist revolution Russia, I wanted to dig deeper into the methods of control used by totalitarian states, and so student groups were assigned one of the “key traits of totalitarianism” from the chart below, and told to make up their own totalitarian regime that used their assigned trait.

To make it a bit more engaging, I told them to make up a name for their country and a flag as well. I told one person in each group to create a Google Slideshow and share it with their groupmates and with me, and that all of their work should go into the slideshow for a presentation to the class. I gave each group a sheet of blank paper and some markers to create their flag, and told them to take a photo of their drawing when finished and insert the image into their slideshow.

The next class meeting began with groups presenting their assigned trait of totalitarianism, with their made-up ways in which a government could implement the method of control. When all seven groups had presented, I wrapped up th activity by identifying which of their imagined methods of control were/ are actually used by totalitarian states.

Carole suggests that I give all of the directions first, then release students to work. That’s what I’d done earlier with 4*. As soon as I started with “you’re an evil dictator and you’re going to make up a totalitarian government” they were out of their seats and already abuzz. They were actually excited about the activity, and I chose not to stop them for the rest of the directions; I didn’t want to disrupt their momentum. The other class had not been excited by the activity and were more than happy to just sit and hear directions. And so I had to go group to group and explain the entire directions. It wasn’t efficient, but it also didn’t crush their enthusiasm for the activity.

Second, in regards to a timer, I do almost always have a timer running with in-class activities. I didn’t for this day’s activity because (a) I wasn’t actually sure how long to give them; 4* had finished fairly quickly because they hadn’t put much energy into it, but I could tell that 5* was different, and so they would probably have needed more — but I didn’t know how much more. And (b) I had nothing else planned for the day! As I mentioned to Carole in our debrief, this is my first time through the curriculum — and I just don’t have a lot of Plan B’s. If an activity runs short… I wing it. That’s not something an Assistant Principal of Academics wants to hear, but every teacher knows that’s the reality on more days than we like to admit in the first year.

All in all, it wasn’t a great lesson… but it wasn’t bad either, I suppose. I didn’t like it at the time, and I was pretty down on myself when the day was done, but that’s not unusual.