Design for Instructions

Design for Instructions

     One example of how I changed my original plan for design was given to me by a student in my class. While in the last week of instruction, the class was working on matching objects according to the sense. I planned an activity which I would place the students in partners and they played a matching game at the computer. The students would take turns matching objects that were the opposite of one another.  We did this activity following a smart board lesson on matching.   When I observed one group I noticed, one group did not begin right away. I went over to help and one of the students told me that he did not know how to match the pictures for the level they had chosen. I asked him to name some of the objects being shown and I discovered that he could identify some of the objects. I then asked the other student to identify the objects and she was able to do so.  After the student heard her name the objects he was able to play the game and match some of the pictures.  His partners held him with the ones he did not know.

         Before this activity, I had played the matching lotto game with them. With the direction, the students were able to play the game. Now I had given them a less concrete activity, and they were having difficulty. In my original plan for design, I had planned more matching activities in which I gave them the method for matching objects. After this incident, I reflected upon what had happened and my lesson designs and decided to make a change.

         I decided that the students had enough practice in matching with concrete directions and that they needed more practice with less direction.   I allowed more practice in partners, and small groups.

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 To start out these new activities the students had to first realize that they knew a variety of ways to math objects. We started out by brainstorming at each practice session the different way they could match. By the end of the unit I could tell the students to match objects and they were able to do so.   I believe that this change in design improved student learning because, without the added instruction, that some of the students could not independently match objects. These added activities gave the students the opportunity to use their higher order thinking and thought them valuable skills in building narratives, design, matching, and much more. The students would also have to really understand each method of matching in order to be able to use it with the new objects. For example, the student would have to really understand the concept of matching by different attributes and size in order to understand if they could not arrange objects according their attributes color and size.

          I feel that changing my plans took the students to a higher order of thinking and understanding of these skills. Although I changed my plans, the new activities still required the students to fulfill the learning goals of the unit. The students were still able to match objects from a variety of designs. I am very glad that I observed the difficulty of the students because I feel that it has improved the teaching of the unit and the learning and the growth of all the students.

         A second response that affected the teaching of the unit was given by another student.  While the class was performing an individual matching activity, the student was having a difficult time. The rest of the class was able to do the activity independently, but this student was

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still having difficulty. I worked with the student to finish the activity, but it became clear to me that he did not understand the concept of matching by shape at all.    After class I reflected upon the student's performance, the activity, and the past assessments. I decided that the rest of the class was ready to move on, but this student was not ready. I decided that he was going to need one on one instruction with much more scaffolding.

           Then the next day at center time, I worked with him and performed a formative assessment in which I gathered data as to what he understood.  I worked with him during center. We began with the easiest learning goal of sorting by color. He needed visual aids in sorting, so I created three circles with yam to give her boundaries for sorting. This helped him to understand better. We used those until she did not need them anymore and she could match and sort independently. Then we moved on to the next learning goal.

         I believed that this one-on-one instruction would help him progress toward the learning goals because I could individualize what I was teaching to him needs. While doing whole class instruction, the rest of the class needed less scaffolding than he.  With the additional instruction, he was getting the help he needed and was able to progress.

        Though this modification did not affect the learning of the other students, it was an important modification because it meant a large amount of growth could be made in one student.  Without the individualized instruction, he could not have met the learning goals. I was excited of the progress that he showed.