please help i need ideas

[ser]

hi,

i live in north carolina and am part of the new teacher cadet program that teaches students to become teachers. we are currently doing lesson plans and practicing our teaching skills. i was assigned a chapter to teach about how schools in the past compare to schools today. the lesson plan needs to include such things as class size, topics of lessons, and what students talk about with eachother. i have all the information i need but i was wondering if you could help me form some good ideas to teach it and make it interesting. i have looked on this site for ideas but none really pretain to what i am trying to teach. the one problem is i only have 20 minutes to teach my lesson and i have to have an opener, objective, justification, content, strategy, and review. what i am asking for help on are the opener and strategy, i would love to come up with something interesting and fun.

thank you

Personally, I always try to open with either humor or intensity. It sounds like you might benefit from a humerous approach for the opener. I'm not sure how far back you are going in the past, but this link has the rules for teachers way back in 1872, and a copy of a teacher's contract from 1923.
http://www.macomb.k12.mi.us/utica/schoolhouse/
Good Luck!
Dennis
1872 Rules for Teachers

1) Teachers each day will fill lamps, clean chimneys.


2) Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.


3) Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of pupils.


4) Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.


5) After ten hours in school, the teachers my spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.


6) Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.


7) Every teacher should lay aside from each day’s pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.


8) Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.


9) The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves

[ser]

thank you so much for your advice and i will try and add some of those rules into my lesson. but what i was really concerned about was how to do the lesson. I know an opener and a close but are notes a good idea? or role play activities? or journal entries? I'm not too sure how to teach the material.

thank you

I hope this is getting to you in time, since Im not sure when you assn. is due.
When you ask about notes, do you mean notes for you while you are presenting, or handing out notes of your presentation to the students to follow while you present?

Role Play activities can be effective, but you have to have willing participants, or it might go flat. Are you teaching this subject to a group of high school students who are considering becoming teachers, or are you presenting your ideas to adults who are working on their credentials?

Journal entries - again depends on your audience. I always give journals to my students, and they are required to write in them every day. Sometimes I pick the topic (If I were invisible, I would...), and others I just let them get creative.

As for how to DO the lesson, well that's really up to you. I assume you have to stand in front of the class and give your presentation. You could give the info in lecture format, using various media to emphasize your points; you could actually teach the lesson, putting your classmates in the roles of students (there's that role play thing!); Part of it depends on how comfortable you are in front of a crowd.

Hope this is helpful.
Dennis

[ser]

thanks again!

i am teaching to a group of high school students who want to be teachers... and they are all like my sisters and brothers so i know nothing would really "go dry"... i love that idea of having them act like students thank you for it!.. i present it on monday... and i'm really excited

thanks

[BigDaddyTeacher]

So...it's Monday. I am curious to know how your presentation was recieved, and how you feel you did as a "teacher for a day"