For someone who studied English Language Literature at a university level, working with the Modern Language Association (MLA) may not be such a difficult thing due to the amount of citing involved and many years of practice. In fact, using MLA to cite courses became a rather easy task after so many assignments. However, the same cannot be said about high school students who are still learning how to compose a proper essay. Asking them to include proper MLA format to their essays is often easier said than done. As any teacher, I wanted my lessons to be fun, educational, relevant, and engaging. However, I was very nervous about the idea of lecturing about MLA for an entire class. The topic is dry and very technical – everything that student dislike in lessons. While I understand that lecturing is a part of the traditional classroom – something modern teachers are instructed to stay away from – I believe it is still the best way to direct certain important information to students. While constructing my MLA lesson plan, I had the idea of creating both an informative and an engaging lesson plan. Thus, I build a PowerPoint for the lecture portion of the lesson and a Kahoot! game as a review.
The PowerPoint includes all the most important topics such as website evaluation, general MLA guidelines, formatting the first page, in-text citations, formatting quotations, and formatting the Works Cited page. Between each topic and major point, the PowerPoint lecture included memes, silly comics, and funny cartoons for the students’ enjoyment. The memes and cartoons served as comic relieve among a dry subject. While all the students were paying attention and many were taking notes, I realized that their attention was beginning to shift; however when they least suspected, the screen projection no longer communicated MLA formatting points, but an image of a dog dressed in a leather jacket! A similar silly cartoon surfaced every six slides or so for the students’ enjoyment and entertainment, something they really appreciated. Instead of moaning and diving deeper into boredom, they were laughing and the anticipation for her next silly cartoon kept their attention on the screen.
The lecture ended and I encouraged my students to stand up and stretch while I set up for the next activity. This five-minute workout helped the students release the energy they had acquired in their seats. As a part of the 21st-century classroom, cell phones, and other common handheld devices are a prominent part of the classroom and my students’ lives. Including the use of such devices is very important to me and to my students. With the use of their technology in class, I encourage positive usage and provide them with ways to use their technologies effectively. For the next section of my lesson, I created a Kahoot! MLA review game. Kahoot! turned out to be a favorite among all the students in the class. It was a fun way to include the use of their laptops, cell phones, and tablets in the classroom.
Student response was very high. They loved the Kahoot! game and the fact that they had the chance to use their technologies in class for the purpose of a lesson was a crowd favorite! It is funny, as soon as I asked them who had their cell phones with them, they were very hesitant to raise their hands and admit to it; however, as soon as I told them the importance of bringing their cell phones to class for certain activities, their hands shot up in a positive response.