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Success: A success I experienced in my classroom occurred during a summary activity. A select number of students were instructed to represent a group discussed in our chapter about Western expansion in the United States. These students were to stand in a line and create a spectrum of how the West effected their people, students on the left were effected the most negatively, students in the middle believe the West had both a positive and negative effect on them, and students on the right believed their group was effected positively by expansion. I qualify this experience as a success because I was able to have all students participate in the activity, students who stood at the front of the room were expected to defend their reasoning for where they chose to stand on the spectrum and students who were seated had to challenge those reasonings and see if they could convince certain people to move on the spectrum. To capitalize on this success, I may incorporate more debate style questions so students get excited about what we are talking about and use more hands on activities for certain topics. One of the key Candidate Learning Frameworks in this success would be Standard A1; Actively Engage All Learners in the Learning Process. This standard of Commitment to Learning was shown in the activity because all students played an important role in the creation of the West spectrum and shared their voices and opinions on where certain groups should be placed on the spectrum created.

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Actively Engage All Learners in the Learning Process.

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How can I motivate students to play an active role in classroom discussions and activities?

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Dilemma: A dilemma I have faced during student teaching is that during some lessons, many students are not playing an active role in the discussion or activity I have planned out for them. When asking questions to the class I always have the same students raising their hands and asking questions while other students just sit there and hope not to be called on. An action I have taken to work on this dilemma is to call on those students who do not raise their hands, unfortunately,  they either give the bare minimum answer or say I don’t know. This dilemma is important to me because many of my lessons contain discussion questions that will help students understand topics better if they participate in active group discussion. If this issue is not resolved I believe the students who do not participate will lose interest in the class and become distracted and possibly district other students. Something I have learned from this dilemma is that it is important to get all your students involved in the discussion or activity you have planned for the class and motivate the students who do not want to participate as best you can.