Clifton Lyddane
Instructional Methods in Social Studies
Professor Stoddard
Concept Formation Lesson: Manifest Destiny
Overview:
I will teach this lesson in an eleventh grade history class. This lesson is designed to
take most of, but not all of a ninety minute block. Students will participate in the definition
of a concept through the process of concept formation. Too often students are expected to
understand and apply concepts without having any practice using them. This lesson will
have students work to define a concept from examples, and then give them practice
categorizing samples as examples or non-examples of the concept. In this lesson students
will define Manifest Destiny, learn some of the factual information from the mid to late
1800s that they will be expected to master, and learn about how the idea of Manifest
Destiny continued to influential in America even after the United States had expanded from
coast to coast.
Rationale:
Manifest Destiny is an important concept for students to master. The belief in
manifest destiny can be used to organize a large amount of the information that students
will be expected to learn on the second half of the nineteenth century. Students will also
find knowledge of Manifest Destiny useful in tracing the development of American foreign
policies up to the present day. Students will develop context for discussions of imperialism
and American Exceptionalism. Students might also think about how contemporary
American patriotism relates to the philosophy of Manifest Destiny. Learning about Manifest
Destiny will also give students context for study of the treatment of immigrants and Native
Americans in the United States. Knowledge of how these groups were treated in the
nineteenth century gives students useful context for studying how policies towards
immigrants and Native Americans have developed over the years. I have deliberately
chosen my examples and counterexamples for the second portion of this lesson so that they
are situated in the areas I have named above. When students reach those portions of the
curriculum they will already have read something about them in this lesson. Studying this
concept will give students a stronger hold on the history of the late nineteenth century, and
will provide students with connections to other periods.
Objectives and Supported Standards:
Virginia SOLs:
This lesson directly addresses VUS.8a, and provides valuable context for VUS.9a
VUS.8a The student will demonstrate knowledge of how the nation grew and changed from
the end of Reconstruction through the early twentieth century by explaining the
relationship among territorial expansion, westward movement of the population, new
immigration, growth of cities, and the admission of new states to the Union.
VUS.9a The student will demonstrate knowledge of the emerging role of the United States
in world affairs and key domestic events after 1890 by explaining the changing policies of
the United States toward Latin America and Asia and the growing influence of the United
States in foreign markets.
NCSS standards:
This lesson supports NCSS standards 1f, 3h, and 6c
1f) Students will interpret patterns of behavior reflecting values and attitudes that
contribute or pose obstacles to cross-cultural understanding
3h) Students will examine, interpret, and analyze physical and cultural patterns and their
interactions, such as land use, settlement patters, cultural transmission of customs and
ideas, and ecosystem changes.
6c) Students will analyze and explain ideas and mechanisms to meet needs and wants of
citizens, regulate territory, manage conflict, establish order and security, and balance
competing conceptions of a just society.
Objectives:
Students will learn to examine a concept and define it carefully by working with their
partner and with the whole class to define Manifest Destiny.
Students will evaluate cases as examples or non-examples of the concept with their
partner. For homework they will work individually to modify existing cases to change them
from examples to non-examples or vice versa.
Students will develop familiarity with the context of Manifest Destiny, and several of the
key events of the second half of the nineteenth century by reading the examples and
working alone and in groups to classify them.
Assessment:
Students will be assessed based on participation during the lesson and based on
three assessment pieces. I will assess participation by watching students during the lesson
and by collecting the worksheets provided. I will grade worksheets for completion. I will
ask students to write a definition of manifest destiny using the three critical attributes
defined in the lesson. Students will also rewrite an example of manifest destiny to make it a
non-example, and a non-example of manifest destiny to make it an example. These three
things will be submitted for homework. I will be able to tell from the assessment whether
or not students have understood manifest destiny and are able to apply it to examples. If
enough students are still having difficulties applying the concept I will re-teach manifest
destiny at the beginning of another class, and tie it into the rest of the lesson.
Content and Instructional Strategies:
Introduction (three to five minutes)
Introduce students to the type of lesson. Tell students that a concept
definition lesson is designed to give them practice in analyzing text, and to
give them practice applying the important concept that is the subject of this
lesson.
First example (five minutes)
Provide students with first example. Students will work as a whole class to
fill in worksheet. Make sure that as they answer the questions they will be
able to deduce the critical attributes of the concept if they work the same
way on the other questions.
Second, Third, and Fourth examples (fifteen minutes)
Students will work with partners to fill in the rest of the chart. Give them five
minutes to work on each example. Circulate around the room to make sure
that everyone is filling in their charts appropriately.
Concept Definition (fifteen to twenty minutes)
Have students confer with their partner on what the differences are between
the examples and then list the differences between the different examples on
the board as a whole class. Once students have run out of ideas ask them to
look at what is on the board and see if anything sparks a new idea. Ask them
to confer with their partner and then share with the class. Update the list on
the board. Follow the same procedure with similarities. When students are
looking for now ideas based on the ideas already listed on the board ask
them to come up with crazy ideas. It may be necessary to draw students
attention to similarities to make sure that the critical attributes are on the
board.
Definition (five minutes)
Tell students the critical attributes of the concept. Circle their ideas on the
board that support this definition.
Manifest Destiny is:
· The Belief in the particular virtue of American Culture.
· The belief that American culture and influence should be spread
(sometimes specifically from coast to coast)
· The belief that the spread of American culture and power is in some way
destined (possibly by God).
Have students write a definition of manifest destiny in sentence form and
have several students share their definitions with the class. Reveal the name
of the concept.
Context (five minutes)
This will be an introduction to manifest destiny. Provide students with some
background knowledge about the origin and influence of manifest destiny.
Show them the John Gast painting and have them identify how it represents
manifest destiny.
Application (fifteen minutes)
Students will work with their partner to discover whether or not the cases
provided illustrate the concept of Manifest Destiny. They should justify each
case using the critical attributes.
Homework assignment and Debrief (five minutes)
For homework or in the remaining time in class students will write down a
sentence defining Manifest Destiny using the critical attributes that we
developed as a class, and change an example to a non-example and a
non-example to an example.
Differentiation: This lesson provides some differentiation for students of different levels. I
created the examples so that students who have difficulties pulling things out of them
would get something. More advanced students will be able to glean more information from
the examples. If I knew the class better and the layout facilitated it I might choose to have
students work in small groups for part of the lesson instead of working with partners the
whole time. This would allow me to create additional material for the advanced groups, and
provide more support for the groups that needed it. This lesson is heavily text based. If I
were to teach it again I would likely try to find more non-text examples for students to
work with. The Gast painting could easily become one of the examples. Some students
might have difficulties working with the cases. I could provide more scaffolding for those
students.
Adaptation: Students who need it could be provided with easier examples, or audio
versions of the examples. I would also makes sure to provide students who need it paper
copies of everything that is in the PowerPoint presentation so that they can follow along in
front of them. Students that have difficulty working with other students could complete the
partnered portion of this lesson alone, though they would not benefit from a partner’s
additional perspectives.
Reflection:
In practice this lesson did not go as well as I expected it to, mostly due to time management
issues and my inexperience. I will definitely try to use this type of lesson again, but I will
attempt to structure the lesson better, and choose a topic that is more immediately
valuable to students. I think that this lesson might work better with a concept that students
have been exposed to, but do not have extensive experience with, rather than as an
introduction to a concept.
If I were to teach it again I would make sure to prepare more questions for students to
draw information out of them to add to the board. A more experienced teacher might not
need to do this, but I found that I was not getting the information that I knew that students
had because I was not asking the right questions and students were not volunteering
information. Another example of how my inexperience caused this lesson to go worse than
it might have is that I did not prepare the lesson for the space I was teaching it in.
When I designed the PowerPoint for this lesson I did not think enough about how it would
work in the classroom where I was teaching this lesson. I thought that I had planned
sufficiently, but when I got to the classroom I realized that I would have to turn the
projector on and off to use the board. This slowed things down tremendously, and because
I did not provide students with all of the cases in a handout they had to rely solely on their
notes. If I taught this lesson again I would make sure that I could write on the board and
keep the examples projected onto a screen at the same time, and I would provide the
students with a paper copy of all cases if possible.
The time management issue could also be attributed to inexperience. The classroom layout
where I taught the lesson has the clock behind the teacher as he or she faces the class. I had
a difficult time telling how long it had been since I told the students that had five minutes.
This was exacerbated by the fact that the clock was digital. I think investing in an analog
watch might help me with my time management until I have enough experience to work
without relying on a clock.
I also feel that I could do a better job with differentiation in this lesson. If I teach it again I
will be sure to provide more variation in the types of sources, and provide everyone with
paper copies of all the cases. Students were mostly divided into three groups as I taught the
lesson: students that were following along, students that thought it was too easy, and
students that weren’t interested at all. I feel that providing more some more complicated
cases would help address the needs of the students that were moving through the lesson
too quickly.