Celia Brent and Stuart Humes
History 2710
Service Learning Project
April 15,2002
Title of Project: Educating high school age youth on some of the major occasions and decisions made by the United States government that shaped the future of our country.
Introduction:
Currently in the Utah’s school districts the regular placement history teachers are being asked to cover from the revolution to the beginning of the 21st century of America History in one school year. However, without sufficient time these educators cannot give the students a good idea about how some of the major decisions, that will affect the future of the country, evolved from an idea into an action. We decided to go into one of the high school in Cedar City, Cedar High, and teach specific lectures on two major occurrences in American history. Mr. Hinton, the history teacher we taught for, gave us the broad subject of World War II. Celia decided to lecture on what happened on the shores of Pearl Harbor before and during the Japanese attack. Stuart decided to lecture on the making and the decision to use the atomic bomb. By talking on specific subject matter the students were more able to grasp the timeline and the concepts that played a part in the history making decisions and actions. We made power point presentations for each of our lectures using pictures and specific quotes from many of the men that were there. By letting the students see exactly what was happening it gave them a structured picture of what transpired during those times.
We decided to use this opportunity as our service-learning project because we know how frustrating it is to have to study an entire nations history without being able to put the story together with important details. When we found out how tight the curriculum was and how important the subject of World War II is to the understanding of the timeline in American history
Timetable:
Preparation:
We began our preparations by contacting Mr. Hinton at Cedar High school. Celia made arrangements to go into the three classrooms that we would be teaching in. On February 27th and March 1st, Celia went to Mr. Hinton’s class and helped the students with their power point presentations that they were giving on the history of any subject. Celia let the students know who she was and why she was there. Then we started to do our research on our two subjects. After all the research was done we put together power point presentations to keep the student’s attention. We only lectured on March 27, 2002 for three class periods. We made outlines for each of the subjects and we also made up a quiz for the end of the class. Each of us lectured for about 20 minutes, then we gave the students time to take their quizzes. Our total teaching time for each class was about one hour.
First period lecture:
We got there right before first period and set up our power point presentations. As the students filed in we handed them their outlines so they could follow the lecture better and write down some key terms. Celia went first because we wanted to be in order chronologically. We introduced ourselves explaining where we were from and why we were there, and then began our lectures. Celia talked about the warnings of Pearl Harbor. She asked questions of the students and got them involved in a discussion. She showed pictures of the ships and beaches. She gave statistic of the casualties and told some stories from men at the scene. After Celia was finished Stuart began to talk about the instances leading up to the dropping of the Atomic bomb. He discussed the range of destruction and the expected casualties. He asked the students questions about some of the factors that could have played a part in the decision of dropping the bomb.
This class didn’t really react as much as we had hoped. They were quiet and it took a lot of effort to get an answer out of them. After handing out the quiz we informed them that this would count toward their grade. Most of them had taken notes, but those who hadn’t began to understand why we passed them out.
Second period lecture:
Second period went much better. This time Stuart had to go first because he had a prior arrangement. This lecture went much better. The students understood why we had given them the outlines and took notes. They asked questions and answered Stuart’s questions with educated answers. The lecture flowed much better and there weren’t so many pauses. Celia’s lecture was much more involved. The students liked the pictures and asked questions about specific details. The lecture flowed smoothly and efficiently. The quiz was passed out and the students did really well.
Third period lecture:
This class is right after lunch. The students were hard to settle down and they were easily distracted. During the lectures it was hard to keep the students attentions. So we asked a lot more questions to make sure the students stayed on task. They answered the questions and they were relatively a good class. Their quizzes had mostly high scores.
As you can see we jumped up in the average for the last class. I think that this is because by the end of the day, we as the lecturers had become more comfortable with what we were saying. We got the students more involved by asking questions and calling on students and catching them off guard. We made sure that they understood and putting together the picture we were trying to paint for them. All of the classes seemed to have a tough time with one question. The question wasn’t specific enough. The presentation over all seemed to be successful. The overall average was 90%.
February 27th – March 27th: Preparation
February 27th and March 1st: Days helping with student power point presentations
March 27th: Day teaching at Cedar High
Projects intended audience, and beneficiaries:
This project was designed to give the students more detail about specific instances that have shaped America today. The students were able to relate former happenings to what is going on in today’s news. Mr. Hinton also asked for our lecture notes and power point presentations for future use. We were both great beneficiaries in this project. We both plan on going into teaching and this was great experience for us in putting together lectures, pictures, and tests. It was a good experience for both of us to get in front of a group of our peers and teach.
Local Contact Person or Agency:
· Contact person
Mr. Hinton
· Where to contact
Cedar High School
703 West 600 South Cedar City, UT 84720
· Phone Number
(435) 586-2820
Explanation of workload and task required to fulfill the project:
This project took a lot of effort to be prepared to teach the students.
Each of us had to do the research for our subject. Most of Celia’s research was found on the Internet. She went to the National Geographic site and imported most of her information from that web site. She got many pictures from this site, however many of them were from various sites. Stuart found most of his information at one site. He found a lot of specific information about the effects and the inventors of the atomic bomb. Some of his research was from old textbooks he had in own library. Each of us typed up an outline for the students to follow along with. Then Celia put together the power point presentations and searched for the pictures. We practiced what we were going to say and how we were going to say it. We typed up five questions from each lecture that we wanted to use in our quiz at the end of class.
Each of the students took a quiz at the end of the lecture. We allowed them to use their notes, but they couldn’t ask questions. They were told about the quiz at the beginning of class. There were 10 questions and therefore 10 points possible for the day.
Time learning to teach:
When Celia went on the earlier dates to Mr. Hinton’s classroom she asked Mr. Hinton about his classes. He gave her some of the worries he had about one of his classes and what the best approach was to keep the students attention. Class involvement was the most important element in keeping the students attention.
The total amount of time for this project was 30 hours.
Technology-related resources or applications:
Mostly we used the Internet as our guide to find information. Celia got most of the stories and the factual information and pictures from these websites:
· www.history.acused.edu/gen/ww2timeline/prelude23.html
· www.pearlharborattacked.com/207.158.224.31/maxim.html
Stuart was really limited on his sources. He found all of his information and pictures at theses websites:
We mostly used the power point as our technological presentation. The school didn’t have access to the Internet and so we couldn’t show as much footage as we wanted to.
Connections to other service learning projects:
We know that other students in the class were doing a similar type of project. We also know that Mr. Hinton is going to use our type of teaching style the next time he covers this era. He asked to keep our quiz and our outlines. He said he enjoyed our presentations and was going to keep a copy of them for future use. Mr. Hinton extended us an invitation to come back and do this again.
How this project turned out:
We feel that this project was a definite success. Both, teachers and students benefited from this experience. We feel that we got a better understanding of the type of work that will be required in the teaching field. We got the chance to come up with our own lesson plans and tests. We had hands on experience inside the classroom. The students got a chance to see a more visual lecture and they reacted well. Mr. Hinton was able to have a day off and see how he could change and improve his lecture based on the student’s reaction to our lecture. The students got a chance to learn great details that put together the story of our nation’s history. They were able to get a better understanding. But not only the students learned from this lesson. Both of us learned a great deal about each of our subjects. We both learned great details about these two important parts of history. We also learned what it was like to be in front of a classroom with total control. Most of all we learned that when we serve others, we would learn the most.