All students registered in groups teach geography/history lessons based on the categories and questions taken from the Geography and History UK/US Survey in the first few weeks of each course. The geography/history lessons ideally will provide information that students will be able to use later in their topic lessons. Students in Module 6.1 should look for questions that especially deal with the cultural studies concepts of identity, power, gender, new media, and culture (see Part II of my book Anglo-American Cultural Studies for more details).
After enrolling via KLIPS and choosing their groups via OLAT, the groups decide on an appropriate number of questions from the Survey for the special warm-up lessons and post these via the appropriate OLAT blog. The warm-up lessons last 15 minutes.
Students in groups provide a research paper excerpt of four A-4 pages reduced to a one page sheet of paper printed front and back to be distributed immediately after their warm-up lesson. The first page should include a table of contents for the ideal paper, which would of course include more content and pages than in this excerpted version. The first page also should include an excerpt from the introduction. Each of the student-teachers is responsible for selected parts of the rest of the paper, which of course can only provide an excerpt of the most important aspects covered in the lesson. The last page has an excerpt from an ideal conclusion followed by excerpts from an annotated bibliography. Please indicate missing passages using ellipsis points in square brackets [...]. Group responsibility is for overall format, graphics, and choice of bibliography with annotations; each student-teacher is responsible for the language, presentation, and content aspect of his or her page. Remember: Facts and insights you gain in Britain and the US are often more relevant and certainly more interesting than mere library research. Of course, all sources used must be cited; you must also include the excerpt of a list of sources including a brief critique of each source and where students can find the sources. Link to more information about research papers.
The
warm-up
lessons and research paper excerpts
are supposed to provide the necessary practice for doing well in the
graded lessons and research papers. We'll be discussing in
class models and mistakes in the warm-up lessons and research paper
excerpt using the
warm-up
lesson evaluation template and the warm-up
paper excerpt evaluation template (also available
in pdf). Students should download hard copies of
these templates and bring them to the first two weeks of our course.
The following guidelines should help you in your preparations for geography and history lessons in all Anglo-American Studies courses.
The questions in the Survey are organized into categories (for example: "UK Geography: Area, Climate, Economy," "US History: Territorial Expansion") intended as a guide for our research into the relevant aspects of geography and history for our other Anglo-American Studies topics. Students should criticize and change questions so that they can better illustrate aspects of American and British society and culture in the widest possible sense. Groups should always briefly mention at the end of their lesson the relevant and important events, people, aspects that were not covered by the questions given in each category. Students will have to choose those questions they consider most relevant for the course but are of course responsible for knowing the answers to all the questions in their category. In the last part of each geography and history class, I can ask student-teachers about the questions they didn't cover. We'll also have time in our review conference sessions to deal with content not covered.
Results of geography and history lessons: We might spend some time discussing aspects of content and presentation techniques and language in the last part of each geography/history lesson. Although you aren't required to submit a review on the geography and history lessons and paper excerpts as you are for the topics lessons, I'd like to encourage you to make notes on what you learned since you'll need to supply some details about the history/geography lessons and paper excerpts in your reviews on the topics lessons and research papers. Some students make use of the OLAT forum for sharing information about the geography/history lessons.
I'll be posting my rough evaluation of each geography and history lesson for the student-teachers via OLAT using the geography and history lesson evaluation template and my evaluation of the research paper excerpts using the geography and history research paper excerpt evaluation template after our review conference session. While these evaluations aren't graded, you should be able to use them as assessment to help you prepare for the graded topics lessons and research papers.
Impressum
/ Disclaimer
29.XI.2011
