STEP Standard 5 - Implementation of Instructional Unit

Implement the unit you have designed. You have already implemented and analyzed the
pre-assessment. In this topic, you will implement all lesson activities, correlating
formative assessments and the summative post-assessment. Choose one of the lesson
activities to video record a 5-10 minute segment, review, and reflect on your teaching.
Have your cooperating teacher/mentor review the recording and provide feedback, if
possible.

Video Recording Link: If you are turning your video in through OneDrive, just note it
here.

Summary of Unit Implementation:

Throughout the unit, students seemed to grow more confident. Even the first day of just
adding and subtracting there was some hesitation to interact with the concept. In terms of
how I wanted the unit to go, I realized that the biggest area of need I have is to allowed
students more time to either work with partner or do activities independently. While the
lesson outlines discussed having students do a problem with a table mate before guided
time, I would often just guide students through the actual problem. From both my
observations from my mentor teacher and TAP evaluations from my school, the areas I
need to improve in is in allowing students to hear and respond to more rigorous
questions. I get caught in guided practice mode within the Resource room because this is
stuff they have to understand to thrive in the gen ed classrooms that I forget independent
time and allowing them to work through a problem is what is going to stick.

Summary of Student Learning:

Looking at the unit I knew going into it that asking students to answer the word problems
was going to be tough. Many of the students I have in Resource do so well with
calculation and can do grade level work if only numbers are involved. Put those same
numbers in a word problem and they have a hard time determining what it is they need to
do. Overall, I think students understand working with decimals more in terms of
calculation particularly with multiplication and division.

Throughout this series of lessons, students seemed engaged and liked having that break at
the end to just glue the notes and color the pages. The lessons flower somewhat smoothly
and it seemed like students were progressing through it. For one of my students, he was
struggling through remembering the steps in multiplying and dividing. When he would
come across these problems he would forget what to do with the decimal, applying a 0 in
the second line of the multiplication problem, or the steps in just long division. While I
wanted to push through and just remind him of the steps using the anchor charts we
made, I decided to take one of my higher students and for Bell work, the two of the
would work on short activities for reinforcement. I wanted to try to have a peer work with
him, rather than having me constantly prompting him towards something. It didn’t help
him remember the steps, however, he seemed more engaged in his work. The other
students was able to show him how to work through a problem, was very patient, and it
helped him be more confident when working with others. While academically it didn’t
show in a giant improvement, it did help the student be more focused.

Reflection of Video Recording:

One aspect of my teaching that I felt I need to improve on is developing more rigor in my
questions. Students have to be challenged by problem and during guided practice time,
some of the questions I ask can be too easy. A second area I want to improve on is
building better classroom management, particularly when it comes to transitioning
between activities. I am happy that students want to talk with me and feel comfortable
with it, but I sometimes lose the room when I respond to every student comment.
I felt I did a good job during the guided practice portion of the lesson. Students were able
to go at a good enough pace to write the information down and I was able to ask
clarifying and guided questions. Moving forward, I would like to implement more rigor
in the questions to help them think more critically.