“ Lesson Study Work: Listening to Abolitionists”

II. CONCLUSION

A. Student Work

Successful understanding of content and historical thinking: Why is this work successful?

• The successful essays revealed that students did think deeply about the ways in which the historical context defined the methods by which people chose to resist.
  
• Another successful piece of work revealed that a student could hold multiple perspectives on one complex topic, and present a very nuanced picture of the ways in which on person might resist an all-invasive legal and immoral institution.
  
• Some work revealed how the resistance to slavery led to or was connected to the end of slavery and/or the Civil War, and therefore saw how individuals and the movement had a real effect.

What was the major struggle for students?

• Some work revealed that some students did not show very much content knowledge.
  
• It also did not reveal very deep thinking about the different strategies of resistance, relying instead on fairly stock answers like, “violence is bad, talking it out is good...”
  
• Some work was shallow in its analysis, and did not contain any synthesis or evaluation.

  B. What did we learn?
  
  The teacher who did the lesson learned to keep student oral questioning around the topic open-ended and more in-depth. For example, ask students to synthesize information.

We learned that the small group presentation process had some benefits, but, typically, varied from group to group.

Too many students were not taking appropriate notes during the lesson, and we learned that we need to focus on appropriate note-taking. The essay ensured that every student at least look at two abolitionists in depth.

C. How has this lesson study affected our teaching, or made us think differently about our practice and curriculum?

This project made us think differently about how, exactly, to teach the constitution. Eighth graders cannot be taught about the Constitution as a backdrop – it needs to be taught explicitly, and it needs to be continually referenced. If we want our students to internalize and critically interrogate the constitution as it changes and as it relates to the day-to-day lives of Americans, then we need to make sure to spiral back to this with every unit subsequent to the study of the Constitution