Preview of my lesson:
I had the opportunity to work with a group of a group of freshman about one of my favorite topics, parliamentary procedure! Below is a quick overview of my lesson:
Do now:
I decided to start off with having the students recall meetings they have attend to have them start thinking back on meetings they have attended and if how they felt in the meeting.Anticipatory set:
I then had the students share their experiences at meetings with other students. As they were sharing I kept interrupting the whole group and throw out random facts about myself. This activity was to make the students feel like they weren't going to be heard in their mini meetings and to get them distracted from what they were talking about. The students got frustrated in their meetings. We all agreed that it was hard to focus one we got cut off and they did were not being heard.
I then introduced some main interests of mine to the group. I wanted them to know who I am and had a way for them to connect with me.
Self Discovery Learning:
I love self discovery learning. I feel like a topic that kids might find less interesting this makes them want to learn about the topic. I placed the steps to creating and adopting a motion in sheet protectors and had the students place them in order.
Once they discovered what a main motion was they found the flow of the order. Many students thought second was a "second opinion after a vote." When I was walking around to the small groups I had to ask some questions to get the group to place "obtain a second" in the right order.
Gaining attention from different learners:
The students then drew icons to these steps on the plastic sleeves to help them remember it. I then quickly lectured about main motion and the characteristics of it.
We watched a great video of how a main motion is presented and passed in order to see the words and how it is played out.
The students loved creating a dance to the steps of adopting a motion. The dance had to demonstrate what a main motion is, what a second is, what discussion looks like and a voice vote. The students presented their group dances and then I dismissed the class.
Review:
I was overall very pleased with the engagement the class had in the lesson. I was surprised that the students wanted to learn about parliamentary procedure. These students had never heard of parliamentary procedure before that day. The students wanted to learn about voting and debating after the self discovery part. That activity helped my lecture component of the lesson!
As an educator I need to plan my questions better. I tried asking students questions to make them think about why we would need parliamentary procedure and I struggled with that.
