Instructional Decison Making
The most effective teacher is the most flexible teacher and being flexible is conducive to creating a productive classroom environment. In education, there is no simple formula for being an effective teacher, but it begins with understanding your classroom climate and knowing your students well enough to make tough decisions on the spot. Throughout my time at Madison Jr. High School, I made a seemingly infinite number of changes to my plans as I went along, proving that you should always have a plan, but just never expect to stick to it. Between the number of snow days we had and last minute changes to the school calendar, the initial design for my unit experienced several modifications. Though the changes I made were not part of my original plan, as I moved through my unit, I knew that those decisions were appropriate and necessary to meet the learning goals. Though many of my plans changed, there are two that stick out in my mind that had a great impact on the overall timeframe and design of the unit.
Summative Project
Given the timeframe for my unit, we originally had several days where students could have given whole group presentations on their summative project. As the number of snow days amounted and changes to the school schedule occurred, we no longer had the extra days, causing me to make changes to the design of the presentation. Not only did I have to shorten some earlier lessons to give students time in class to create their projects, but I also had to condense the presentations to one day. In the final lesson, I initially had enough time to introduce the line of best fit and finding the equation for the line to interpolate and extrapolate values. Again, due to the time limitations, Mr. Dyer and I both decided it would be most beneficial to show students a method for informal insertion of the line of best fit. Again, this decision was difficult to make, but considering students' skill levels, a lesson on equations of lines would have taken too much time. Ultimately, this became a more age and skill appropriate objective that still helped students reach the learning goal. Additionally, this reduced the requirements on the summative projects, allowing students to focus more on their data collection and displays. Both of these changes ended up being better for myself and the students. Since the students ended up presenting to small groups, I believe that they were more confident in sharing their findings and explaining their data. Looking back at my initial unit design, it seems that I had tried to fit too much into such a short window of time. I had not accurately considered what my students already knew and appropriately designed the lessons. In the future, it will be critical for me to spend more time ensuring that students understand the basics before trying to introduce new topics.
Homework
My initial plan for my unit had assigned students some form of homework almost each night. The more time I spent at the school and worked with the students proved that this would not have been a good use of time. In the end, the work we did in class was enough for the students to prove to me that they understood the lessons. Additionally, after having a greater understanding of the students' home lives and responsibilities, it did not seem fair or right to assign homework. For many students, this would have ultimately brought their grade down as they do not typically do their homework. Instead, we would spend any remaining time in class to practice what we had learned. I also incorporated games like Kahoot to refresh students' memories and check for understanding. Even though this took extra time, it ended up being one of the best decisions as it catered to learner preferences and was exactly what the students needed to effectively meet the goals.