Shauna's Final Reflection

Overall, our presentation went well. We had trouble in the beginning since there was so much information about immigration. We had several different options on what exactly to teach. I think that using graphs, statistics, and charts to teach is a great way to get students interested in a topic. They can be used as a hook or they can be used throughout an entire lesson. I liked finding all of the information that we could use in our presentation; however, our presentation should have presented the class with more information about the topic. Even though we learned a lot, I am not sure if the class did from what we showed them. For example, we only asked a couple of questions that actually taught the class about the topic. We used more information from data from the class rather than teaching about immigration. It would have been good if we created a hand-out for people to analyze and then create the graphs/charts. I knew that people learned a little about the topic, but I wanted to teach more about it. We spent a little too much time explaining the different types of graphs and charts instead of focusing on the important information. The class had a great review of different types of charts/graphs, but may not have learned about immigration enough to be able to form an opinion. By the end when I asked whether or not people thought that immigration was a problem in this country, I was not sure that people had enough data and facts to formulate a strong opinion. I think the class enjoyed being able to choose which type of graph to make and learn a little more about immigration. The topic of immigration was very interesting for my partner and me. It is something that we hear about all the time, yet we lacked knowledge of some of the basic facts. After researching the topic, we were able to talk about it more and have an opinion about it. I learned a lot of information about the other current events as well, which are very important for teachers to know about. I liked the fact that we were all given different topics and strategies. Each presentation went well and it was great to hear from everyone. The whole class clearly did a lot of research and they were knowledgeable about their topics. Overall, this was a great way for people to learn more about current events and also to become more interested in them in the future. Since this project, I have become more interested in the news and in current events in general. It is important to use these topics in our classrooms someday and we should start to learn about them as soon as possible. Even though topics such as immigration are large and sometimes hard to jump into, with time and research anyone can gain a full understanding of what is happening in the world. The events that we learned about in class are issues taking place today. This was a great way for people to learn more about them and also to see how easy it is to research them and learn about them. Current events will certainly be a part of my classroom someday.