TPACK: France vs. The Rest of the World.

One of my personal favorite lesson plans that I ever had for a class was for an AP US History class, where the topic of that class was World War One— specifically, the viewpoints that each country involved had for the conflict.

The lesson began as a lecture from our history teacher, where he talked us through the different things which were occurring at that particular time in World War One. He talked about the different conflicts between countries, and what events led to those conflicts. He discussed different alliances, as well as which countries were and weren't involved at this time. This lecture didn't last very long before we were asked to do our own research on a country— a country we were able to chose for ourselves. I chose France. 

Each of us, with a partner, spent a good amount of that class researching that country's specific alliances, enemies, conflicts, etcetera, in order to represent that country for next class in a classroom-wide debate. Never had I so looked forward to a class. 

I prepared my notes well, worked with another student who also represented France, and came into class excited for the debate. 

When it comes to content knowledge, you certainly get a bit of an unbalanced look into the countries' viewpoints at first. However, once you begin debating, the information that each country shares about itself at the debate becomes relevant for your own argument, thus the understanding is furthered because it has actual use in the moment. The information our teacher initially shared with us at the beginning was useful because it provided us all with a context of the situation, and was engaging to us. He is very knowledgable on the content, able to answer any questions with ease. 

Pedagogically, this approach was a good approach for our specific classroom. My AP US History classmates were generally at their best in discussions, performances, and group based work— with a few students who preferred working alone or who were shy. This assignment worked on a number of levels to accommodate this— researching was done either alone or with our country partner, and note taking and discussion of approach for the debate was done one-on-one with a partner, and then the debate allowed for the more outgoing and discussion based partners to speak up often, while shyer classmates were still given a turn to speak without feeling as though there was enormous pressure to do so. 

There was little technology that came into play for the assignment. Our teacher lectured with a slide show for a visual support, which was useful to each of us, as well as providing time for each of us to research (on our iPads) about our country using the resources available online. 

Reflecting back on this assignment, I have an appreciation for how long it has stuck in my memory in comparison to other school learning activities. I was fully invested, and the assignment itself was useful as well as fun. It created a situation where the knowledge we were researching was given a purpose and an audience, much like in our GRASPS lesson planning. The technology, although not intensely exciting, was useful for learning as well as researching, exactly what we needed in order to get the task done effectively. The class had times of listening, sitting and researching, and then moving around and discussing (albeit often a little too loudly), so that we didn't just listen for an entire class period. 

This lesson holds up to what I see us learning now, although certainly any lesson can be improved upon. If I were to brainstorm what might be the first thing to improve, it might be less lecture time, or more technological integrations— although to me, the lesson worked well as it was.