The reflection I did this time was during a lesson on social studies.  We had been studying the Mayan Empire and its achievements as well as its cruelty.  This was done mostly in whole group discussion.  After this, the children did an art project that helped them label all of the important parts of the Mayan Empire.  They seemed to enjoy this project and were engaged during the whole group discussion.  One thing I have noticed is that it is the same few students who participate every time.  They tend to dominate the class discussion.  For this reason, I may redirect my questions to random members of the classroom, or practice more small group discussions in the future.  This way, the students who are shy or may not be thinking through the answer will be able to gain knowledge through conversation with their peers.  We could even make a game of it; after each group discussed, I could see which group was able to get all the questions right.

    Another thing I noticed that was rather disconcerting is that when the students were doing their next assignement, which was a quiz of their knowledge of the Mayans, they were not able to answer some of the problems, even with the book in front of them.  Their comprehension skills may not be up to par with the fifth grade text book.  For this reason, I would like to provide some alternative resources on the subject for those who are struggling to understand the text.  Perhaps a short minilesson about how to locate information from the text would be enough to help resolve this problem in the future as well.  I will probably have to trouble shoot on that one.

     Some of the questions dealt with higher order thinking skills.  The students were asked to answer questions where the answer was not available in the text book.  They would have to simply think of a logical answer to the question with their own insight.  Many, if not all of the students struggled with these questions.  I will need to give more support to guide them in the direction of independent thinking.  Working in groups for those types of questions may help yield better results.