Learning Cycle with WW2

Hi readers welcome to my blog. This is my first time making a blog so any suggestions or comments will be appreciated.
Today I would like to discuss a lesson plan than my group and I have been working on. Unlike most lesson plans that I have created, this lesson plan is different we have created a lesson plan using the learning cycle format. Our lesson is teaching the causes of the United States getting involved in World War Two.

 

 For those of you who don't know what a learning cycle format is let me give you a brief overview. The learning cycle is composed of three major key points that got in cyclical order.

The first point is the exploratory phase. For those educators who know what an anticipatory set is, this is not much different from it. However, if you don't know neither what an anticipatory set nor an exploratory phase than here is a very quick synopsis of it. The exploratory phase is the attention grabbing activity in the beginning of the lesson whereas who access the knowledge of your students. A key thing to note, in an exploratory phase that are not giving or correcting new intimation. It is entirely student centered and student ran. Your job as the educator is to facilitate the conversation or whatever medium the exploratory phase is centered around. In terms of our lesson plan and the exploratory phase, we are looking at one of the causes of our intervention which was the use of propaganda. We will have students analyze a combination of political cartoons, pictures, and articles and then have them discuss what they are thinking about. We will stimulate conversation by asking our students questions like “What is this poster trying to trying to tell us?” or “What is the overall theme?”

The next phase is the son development this is not much of any difference with the phase of instruction that you normally are doing in a lesson. the main thing in the lesson development is that you are either introducing new ideas that the students didn't already know, for example explaining how propaganda was not only used by the united states but also other countries like Germany and Japan, or building off of previous student knowledge. Either way the information presented should be new concepts that students could learn. In our lesson the students are expanding their knowledge of the causes of World War Two through Primary and Secondary Sources. For our lesson this activity is also student centered and teacher facilitated.
Lastly comes the expansion phase.

In this phase students are taking what they know and just learned and expanding that concept to other areas of their world. For example in math. If a student just learned that 2*2=4, than they can think make the connection that 2+2+2+2 is the same. Expansion of the main concepts is a very important part of the learning cycle process. It increases the student's understanding of the topic as well as thinking skills. In our lesson we have students build off the causes of World War Two in either writing a paper about similar situations or creating a propaganda poster of their own. Here is an example of the homework.

World War II Causes Homework

You just learned major causes of WWII, Propaganda, attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Neutrality act. Building off of what you did in class choose one of the options below.

1.      Making a propaganda poster (of World War II or something they believe in?)

a.       Must have at least one picture relevant to the topic.

b.      The topic of your Propaganda poster should be clear!

c.        You should portray your propaganda through creative ways. (Cartoons, comic strips, pictures, poems, songs, or other ideas)

2.      Writing a paper on how they will combat the neighboring school that is “threatening war” (Neutrality Act)

a.       1 page single space 12 Times New Roman font.

b.      Should be well organized with a brief introduction body and ending conclusion.

c.       Spelling and errors do count!

d.      Title of the paper on the top.

e.       Stick with the idea of neutrality.

3.      Writing a piece on what it would be like to be Japanese (during the war or during Pearl Harbor?)

a.       1 page single space 12 Times New Roman font.

b.      Should be well organized with a brief introduction body and ending conclusion.

c.       Spelling and errors do count!

Now I don't claim to know everything about the learning cycle nor about creating lessons. So if you have any thoughts ideas or corrections about the learning cycle process or my lesson plan that was used in my explanation, please feel free to express them. I don't bite (hard).