Delivery Approach
All of the material of the instructional unit is live, except for a small part in a lesson where the learners are completing a task online. The instructor must be present for the entirety of the instructional unit. The learners need an instructor's guidance throughout the unit. The learners will work in small groups, large groups, and individually throughout the unit. The instructional unit will take 7-10 hours and will be taught over 7-8 60 minute math lessons.
The design process used in this instructional unit was based off of the Nine Events of Instruction. The Nine Events of Instruction are very closely related to what the school district requires the teachers to submit for lesson plans. Each lesson plans starts with gaining the student’s attention. Next the objective is clearly stated and typically copied down. The next part of the lesson continues with activating prior knowledge and making the future lesson relate to something the students have had some experience with. Each lesson is progressive so the majority of the prior knowledge is from the previous lesson. The material is presented and guidance is provided for the students on the new material. A short time is allowed for individual practice, followed by a quick review and feedback. Typically the feedback gives enough information to assess the group of students. Sometimes a formal assessment is given if the informal assessment deems not enough.
Audience
The instructional unit is taught to 34 fifth graders from one classroom. Math is taught for sixty minutes each day. The students’ abilities in the classroom have a very wide range of different abilities. It is a co-taught classroom with the designer teaching the majority of the math and science content and the co-teacher teaching the majority of the reading and writing. The classroom consists of eleven students with IEPs. The student’s with an IEP do not impede the scores as the wide range of abilities is seen throughout all 34 students. There are not standardized scores to show data from the previous year, but the students take a pre-assessment at the beginning of each unit and it clearly showed the lack of knowledge using basic fractions. Only fifty percent of the students were able to pass the pre-assessment for adding and subtracting fractions with like and unlike denominators.
Demographic
The instructional setting is in one classroom at an elementary school in Las Vegas, Nevada. The classroom consists of a fifth grade group of 34 students. The school is located in a low socioeconomic part of town with 96% of the students on free or reduced lunch. Of the 34 students: 50% (17) are Hispanic, 3% (1) are Asian or Pacific Islander, 30% (10) are Black or African American, 9% (3) are Caucasian, and 12% (4) are Mixed or Multicultural. (The percentages do not add up to 100% because of basic rounding to make the percent more accurate).
There are 32% (11) students with an Individual Education Plan (Special Education). Of the 17 Hispanic students, all are bilingual, with one being emerging. The 17 Hispanic students are all bilingual and the one emerging student cannot converse in English, but has a firm understanding of math concepts, the student can read and understand English, but do not have the ability to speak English.
With the school being in a low socioeconomic area comes with issues of transiency and truancy. Over the course of ¾ of the year the group of fifth grades has seen 11 new students and 10 other students leave the school during the year.
Instructional Sequence
The instructional unit will take place over 10 days. Each lesson will last roughly 60 minutes. The instructional unit is designed to scaffold information from the previous learning target. Each lesson will follow the design of the components of an effective lesson. (Introduction, Review, Objective, Skill Development, Guided/Independent Work, Homework, and Closure)
This will be the third year in a row these students have received information on fractions, but it will be the first year these students have had to add and subtract fractions with like and unlike denominators. The few students who do have prior knowledge with fractions typically lose that understanding over summer break. A lot of angst is common when introducing fractions as many of the students relate fractions to failure. Changing their attitudes towards fractions and making the content more interesting is critical in order to receive success. Many students view fractions as an impossible task and will simply guess without putting forth any effort. The guessed answers usually end with students just adding the numerator and denominator together without first finding a common denominator. This simple, but wrong function can be transferred into the correct function, but students typically forget what rule goes with which operation. Another reason students have a hard time with fractions is because they lack the knowledge on what each fraction actually represents in terms of size. With this instructional unit the students will be introduced to fractions and their equivalent percentages to show a better understanding of what the fractions represent as a percent. Knowing percentages to fractions will simplify fractions and give the students the necessary knowledge to add and subtract these fractions together correctly.
The design process used in this instructional unit was based off of the Nine Events of Instruction. The Nine Events of Instruction are very closely related to what the school district requires the teachers to submit for lesson plans. Each lesson plans starts with gaining the student’s attention. Next the objective is clearly stated and typically copied down. The next part of the lesson continues with activating prior knowledge and making the future lesson relate to something the students have had some experience with. Each lesson is progressive so the majority of the prior knowledge is from the previous lesson. The material is presented and guidance is provided for the students on the new material. A short time is allowed for individual practice, followed by a quick review and feedback. Typically the feedback gives enough information to assess the group of students. Sometimes a formal assessment is given if the informal assessment deems not enough.
Audience
The instructional unit is taught to 34 fifth graders from one classroom. Math is taught for sixty minutes each day. The students’ abilities in the classroom have a very wide range of different abilities. It is a co-taught classroom with the designer teaching the majority of the math and science content and the co-teacher teaching the majority of the reading and writing. The classroom consists of eleven students with IEPs. The student’s with an IEP do not impede the scores as the wide range of abilities is seen throughout all 34 students. There are not standardized scores to show data from the previous year, but the students take a pre-assessment at the beginning of each unit and it clearly showed the lack of knowledge using basic fractions. Only fifty percent of the students were able to pass the pre-assessment for adding and subtracting fractions with like and unlike denominators.
Demographic
The instructional setting is in one classroom at an elementary school in Las Vegas, Nevada. The classroom consists of a fifth grade group of 34 students. The school is located in a low socioeconomic part of town with 96% of the students on free or reduced lunch. Of the 34 students: 50% (17) are Hispanic, 3% (1) are Asian or Pacific Islander, 30% (10) are Black or African American, 9% (3) are Caucasian, and 12% (4) are Mixed or Multicultural. (The percentages do not add up to 100% because of basic rounding to make the percent more accurate).
There are 32% (11) students with an Individual Education Plan (Special Education). Of the 17 Hispanic students, all are bilingual, with one being emerging. The 17 Hispanic students are all bilingual and the one emerging student cannot converse in English, but has a firm understanding of math concepts, the student can read and understand English, but do not have the ability to speak English.
With the school being in a low socioeconomic area comes with issues of transiency and truancy. Over the course of ¾ of the year the group of fifth grades has seen 11 new students and 10 other students leave the school during the year.
Instructional Sequence
The instructional unit will take place over 10 days. Each lesson will last roughly 60 minutes. The instructional unit is designed to scaffold information from the previous learning target. Each lesson will follow the design of the components of an effective lesson. (Introduction, Review, Objective, Skill Development, Guided/Independent Work, Homework, and Closure)
This will be the third year in a row these students have received information on fractions, but it will be the first year these students have had to add and subtract fractions with like and unlike denominators. The few students who do have prior knowledge with fractions typically lose that understanding over summer break. A lot of angst is common when introducing fractions as many of the students relate fractions to failure. Changing their attitudes towards fractions and making the content more interesting is critical in order to receive success. Many students view fractions as an impossible task and will simply guess without putting forth any effort. The guessed answers usually end with students just adding the numerator and denominator together without first finding a common denominator. This simple, but wrong function can be transferred into the correct function, but students typically forget what rule goes with which operation. Another reason students have a hard time with fractions is because they lack the knowledge on what each fraction actually represents in terms of size. With this instructional unit the students will be introduced to fractions and their equivalent percentages to show a better understanding of what the fractions represent as a percent. Knowing percentages to fractions will simplify fractions and give the students the necessary knowledge to add and subtract these fractions together correctly.