Phase 2

Instructional Decisions/Teaching

My lesson plan was very detailed, allowing for me to explain each step of the lesson.  For young students, it will be important to keep the instruction simple as one objective could be broken into two or three mini lessons.  Young kindergartners and first graders will not  have much “prior experience”, so it will be important to establish a foundation for further understanding.  I started my lesson with a short, animated video that introduced the concept of graphing data and the definition of “graph” and “data”.  This would help facilitate understanding as the objective of organizing and representing data with categories is met.  The goal of collecting and recording data is simplified as students count and record with manipulatives the animals that have ‘escaped the Zoo’, something most students would understand.  Even at a young age, most students can identify animals and give them their proper name.  Those who struggle with vocabulary could easily learn the name of four animals with proper words and corresponding pictures.

Assessment of Learning:

Assessment would be continuous throughout the lesson.  In the pre-assessment stage, I would  make sure all students participated as they were grouped according to what they ate for breakfast.  I would have visual pictures on the board of different breakfast foods to help with vocabulary connections.  As we created a class graph of our “data”, I would ask various students to help create the graph, both using the Unifix cubes and also on the wipe-board. As we collected and graphed the animals, it would be important to go around and talk with the individual groups, making sure they understood the connections between the number of animals and the Unifix cubes that represented that same number.  As a class, I had planned to combine the group numbers and complete another class graph of all the animals.  After reviewing my peer comments, I would modify this part of the lesson.  For first graders, this might be confusing when they moved on to the technology part of the lesson which asked them to make their own graph of the escaped animals.  Another suggestion that I would incorporate would be the coloring of their own graphs with the data of the smaller groups.  This would also help with the transition to technology.  To meet the needs of those struggling with the spelling of the animals, another suggestion was to include an image in the middle of the circle along with the name of the animal.

Assessment Examples:

There are two separate assessments that would assist me as a teacher to make sure that there is a solid foundation of organizing and representing data.  The first would be the colored charts of the group’s collected data.  The second would be the print-out of the website graph.  The end results of both should be the same.  As I looked over these assessments, I would be able to identify which students needed more instructions and also provide me with feedback on how to proceed with various parts of the measurement and data standards.