7/30/2019 TIE535 Instructional Commentary

1/3

Fiona ConnaghanTIE535- Final ProjectOctober 19th, 2012

Instructional Commentary

I: In the instruction seen in the clip, describe strategies you used to engage students

in learning tasks to develop skills and strategies to comprehend or compose text.

The class I taught this lesson to is my youngest class. They are also the most easilydistracted. Because these students lose focus so easily, developing methods of keepingthem hooked in the lesson can be really difficult. In the video you can see me using a varietyof strategies to help catch and hold their attention so that they can develop the skills andknowledge they will need to master the objective.

I began with a review of what we had discussed the day before with regards to salestax and tipping. This was done to refresh their memory and get them ready for what would

be coming up in todays lesson. This also helped to support their vocabulary developmentand mastery of the new terminology and real-world concepts being studied. At this point,students were becoming more comfortable working with percents. I have found that whenyou provide real-world situations where the math being studied in class can be used inreal-world situations, the students will be much more willing to buy into the work beingdone in class. With this being said, I displayed some of the discount advertisementsstudents brought to class for homework up on the document camera. This led into adiscussion of what a discount is and what it means if we say 50% or 20% off of something.The real-world examples of discount advertisments helped to catch the students attention.

Also, whenever I get an opportunity to connect what we are doing in class to someaspect of the students lives, I try to take advantage of it. In the clip you will hear me talking

about the discounts we can receive at stores, and what that means. You will also hear mediscussing the Chicago sales tax, a number that I shared with students the day before.These are all items that relate directly to students lives. Many of these students may haveencountered situations where their parents bought something on sale or at a discountedprice. Additionally, the background of this lessons problem involved purchasing CDs. Musicis something many of these students enjoy and can relate to. In the video you will hear mereference Justin Biebers new album. This was done to infuse some humor into the lesson

and catch the students attention (I knew prior to the lesson that majority of students were

not fans of Justin Bieber).Outside of providing real-world situations for the math at hand and relating our

work back to the students lives, I also feel that cold calling helps to keep students alert and

aware of what is being discussed in class. Throughout the video, you will see me cold callstudents. This helps to keep the students accountable for their own learning; and it alsohelps provide me with feedback on student understanding.

II: Cite examples of language supports seen in the clip(s) to help your students

understand that content and/or participate in literacy discourse central to the

lesson.

7/30/2019 TIE535 Instructional Commentary

2/3

A key goal of this lesson was to help students become more comfortable with usinglanguage such as sales tax, tip, discount and consumer. This means that students needed toknow the definition of each and the difference between each (tip and tax is added to thetotal, discount is taken off of the total etc.). One way I helped to support theirunderstanding of these words is through modeling the usage of them and also taking time

during the launch of my lesson to have students explicitly define them.Also, I spent time emphasizing to students the importance of organizing and labeling

their work. Because problem 4.3 involved many steps, students were encouraged tocalculate each part of the final bill, but more importantly, also label each number theycomputed. This provided students with time to use and develop an understanding of eachof the above concepts. That was something students really struggled with, they could goahead and calculate 6% of $15.95, but once they got the answer of .96, they would haveforgotten what the significance of that number was.: Was .96 the tax? Discount? What do Ido with .96 now that I have it?. So as student worked through the problem, they really hadthe opportunity to start mastering these concepts and what each of them means. During thesummary of my lesson, I was sure to model nice and neat work up on the board; and I

showed students how to label each number.Another language development support I provided for this lesson was problem

background information. I was sure to have students define CDs and CD singles (with MP3players becoming more popular, I wasnt sure whether or not students would have a firm

understanding of what a CD is). I also displayed the problems sale information up on thedocument camera for the duration of the explore phase of the lesson. This was donebecause I know these students struggle with reading. In the book, the problem contains alot of words, and I knew the students would become overwhelmed when they would beworking through the problem and trying to figure out the cost of each CD and the discountpercent. Instead of forcing the students to reread the introduction paragraph to theproblem, I displayed the key facts they needed in order to solve the problem up on the

board (See supporting document attachment for a copy of this).

III: Describe strategies for eliciting student thinking and how your ongoing

responses further their learning. Cite examples from the clip(s).

The biggest strategy I use when teaching math to help my students develop theirproblem solving and thinking skills is to simply monitor the amount of information andsupport I provide them. This is something my mentor teacher has been working on with mesince the beginning of the year. We dont want to simply model how to solve a problem and

then have the students practice it. We want them to discover how to solve these problemson their own so that the skills and concepts being studied are more meaningful for them.

Everyone has their own way of constructing their own knowledge on something. Allowingthe students to struggle through a problem more independently and with less support willhelp them make their own meaning out of what is being studied. In the video you will hearme helping students understand the contexts of the problem and emphasizing organization,but I really do not ever go over how they will solve the problem. Students have to figurethat out in their small groups.

During the explore phase, when students were struggling, I always tried to providequestions for them to answer that would help guide their thinking. One strategy I always

7/30/2019 TIE535 Instructional Commentary

3/3

try to use when assisting students is answering their questions with a question. By notsimply giving them the answer they are searching for or showing them how to solve theproblem, I am forcing them to think about it themselves and try to develop their ownstrategy for solving the problem. You see me using this strategy during the video clip whenI am working with Lonnie. I am asking him what the $4 means, and what do we do with

that $4 now that we calculated it. This forces Lonnie to go back through his work, and backto the problem to determine what his next steps should be.

IV: Reflection

As I look back on the lesson and view the video, I realize that there are still manythings I could have done to help enhance student learning and understanding of theconcepts at hand. I think I did well in terms of limiting the amount of support I gave tostudents so that they would have more room to think independently. I also feel that I did agreat job of helping students organize their work and make meaning out of the differentvocabulary, such as tax, discount and tip. However, students still struggled through

differentiating between total after tax and tax amount, and total after discount and discountamount. Those are all different things. If the question on a test is asking you what the taxamount is, and you give me the total after tax, you havent provided me with the answer I

was looking for. Students need to have a firm understanding of the differences. I also forgotto use my summary to have students share out different strategies they used to solve theproblem. The majority of students used multiplication to determine the discount and taxamounts. However, Lonnie used a percent bar to estimate the discount, instead ofmultiplication. My summary would have been the perfect time to ask him to bring up hispaper and walk us through his strategy. In the midst of a lesson, I often forget to completeall the tasks I originally outlined to complete in my lesson plan. For example, most of thediscussion questions I have listed under the We Do section of my lesson plan were not

used. This is simply because I forgot about them in the rush of the lesson. Being moreorganized and concise during my lesson is something I really need to work on. I alsonoticed from my video that during my summary, the students at the table up front may nothave been following along. It looks like they are continuing to work through the problemwhile I am going over it. It is good that they are still engaged in the math problem, but atthat point they really should have been more engaged in what I was going over up on theboard so that they could check their work and be sure they were solving the problemcorrectly. Something I could have done to help bring their attention back to me would havebeen to cold call them.

Overall, I feel the lesson went relatively smoothly and that majority of students wereengaged in the math. The majority of the students were on task and actively developing

their problem solving skills in terms of percents. Some students, however, were off taskand some of the lesson structuring could have been more organized. As I prepare for mylead teach, I hope to keep these items in mind as I continue to plan and implement mylessons.