While planning this lesson on 3-D shapes, I was excited because I knew I wanted to use a strategy that would engage my students. They had been writing and working in their math books the entire week while learning about 3-D shapes. Instead of using the book, I wanted the kids to use their hands. Especially since their final assessment was coming up and they needed the practice. The strategy I used was using food. This would keep the kids engaged because I used the food as an incentive. If they did their work they would get to eat the food. Additionally, I knew from looking at what would be on their final assessment that they would need to know specific attributes and names of 3-D shapes. This gave me the idea of using a sorting activity with the food.

The day of my lesson, I had planned on starting quickly after coming in from outside time. However, just as in anything, unexpected things can happen. The fire alarm went off just as we were lining up to go inside. Luckily, my CT has set up a pretty structured management system that made this unexpectency go smoothly. When the students came back in, they followed the routine they normally do when coming in from outside. I gave brief time to get water, then began, leaving limited time to get distracted. I started with a brief review so that it would engage the students and start their minds off the right way. Since these students need explicit instruction, I used the rest of the engaging time to tell them the instructions of the activity. This allowed me to express my expectations for the lesson and their behavior.

If I had to teach this lesson again there are a couple of things I would do differently. When doing the shape sort, I would have the students write down or sketch within their Venn diagram. This would allow me to remember their learning and understanding of 3-D shapes as I look back over them. Additionally, this keeps them accountable in the assessment. I would also like to incorporate some moving opportunity into the lesson. I think movement is important in student learning, especially for the younger students. It keeps their minds engaged and active. I’m just not sure how I would use movement in it, this is where I would have to brainstorm. Another thing I’d like to look into doing differently is the type of assessment I did. I’d like to give every student the opportunity to find success, so showing mastery only through writing doesn’t give this opportunity. One assessment I could use is acting out. With acting out through a skit, I’m not sure how they would do this besides a student becoming a “shape character” that explains the attributes of that shape.

Something that surprised me was how well behaved and engaged the students were. They followed directions entirely and I didn’t have to get onto them once. I had expected I had to redirect students at some point to not eat the food. However, with that initial set of expectations that I set in the beginning and the desire to eat all their snacks must have kept their motivation. Towards the beginning of this semester, I had set the goal of becoming better at explaining my directions and expectations because the students within my class had a difficult time with that when I first started. From this lesson, I can see the growth that I have made with my expectation explanation ability. Another thing that surprised me in this lesson was the students who did well. I had a wide variety of students who did really well in this lesson and I really think that’s tied to my differentiation that I used. One of my students who is below level normally gives up pretty early in on a lesson because the content is to fast paced for him. However the sorting worksheet that I made was at the readiness level appropriate for him. This allowed him to follow along and still learn at the same time as the rest of the class. He stayed on task the whole time, even to the end when they were working independently. I also think that working with his hands was another factor that kept his engagement. He is one of those students who needs to have something in front of him to learn. Working in a work book just doesn’t work for him, and that’s okay. It then just becomes the teacher’s job to accommodate for their learning needs. On the opposite end, one of my students who is above level normally gets so bored with a lesson because he knows the content and it doesn’t challenge him. The differentiation that I did on his sorting worksheet required him to follow along and listen to the lesson because he had to fill in things as we went. He wouldn’t be just a present body in the room, he had a task that kept him accountable and engaged throughout. From the amount of student success that I had with this lesson, I would definitely use my differentiated sorting worksheets again.

The connections that I can make to my course work is in my teaching math course. In this course we learned the multiple ways that math content could be taught. They gave examples and explanations as to why math should be taught through more than a work book. They articulated how fully understanding a math concept can be seen when a student is given a problem and is able to apply their learning in another way (Van de Walle, Karp, & Bay-Williams, 2013). For example, since the students had been using their math work book the previous week, they were able to use what they learned in that and apply it to the food shape sort. Anther connection that I made was within my planning instruction class. In our textbook they explained how important the concept of “one size doesn’t fit all” was within education. This quote was the starting point of explaining why differentiation is so essential in the classroom and the difference that it can make. After this lesson and a few other lessons I have taught where I have really differentiated, I completely understand the significance. As I’ve gone through this education program, I have heard the word differentiation so many times, but the impact that it actually has on students justifies the prevalence of the word.

My next steps after this lesson is to give the students their summative final assessment to view their learning and ensure understanding. From the assessment that I used in this lesson, I see that the majority of the students were able to master the concepts that were focused on. The summative assessment is in a much easier format because it is all multiple choice. Knowing that I am confident my students are prepared for the final assessment. After giving the summative assessment, I will then truly be able to see what students got it and what students didn’t. If there are students that might have missed a concept on the summative, I can always pull a small group while my CT is teaching to re-teach and re-establish the material.

The ELL accommodations that I made in this lesson were how I structured my teaching and visual cues. The structure of my lesson was done in the “I Do, We Do, You Do” fashion. I modeled what the students would be doing first, then I did a sort with them as a class, then after I felt the students were competent and understanding the material, I allowed them to work independently. The visual cues were apart of my differentiation on my sorting worksheets. For students who may need more support with the names of the 3-D shapes, I included images of that shape next to the word. This allowed them to match that image with the word and then with the food item.

After completing this lesson I learned that students do well with hands on activities where there are incentives involved. I have used hands on activities before with counters and cubes, however, this lesson went a lot more smoothly than prior ones. I know that when students are engaged and actively learning there are less behavior problems, so knowing how food creates that engagement will guide me as I plan other reviews with students. Review is a significant lesson for any grade because it gives students the ability to apply their knowledge they have been learning about before the test. This lesson has shown me how using food can benefit the students learning within a review.

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Reference:

Van de Walle J.A., Karp, K., & Bay-Williams, J. M. (2013). Elementary and middle school mathematics: Teaching developmentally (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.