Ally Moore

ELM-490

Professor Spiezio

October 6, 2019

STEP Standard 5: Implementation of Instructional Unit

Throughout this unit, most of the lessons went exactly as planned. However, we did

have a major behavior issue on the third day (Wednesday) that resulted in me having to stop

the lesson for about ten minutes. A student who was having a very hard time paying attention

decided to punch another student in the face. The student who got punched was bleeding a lot

and crying, so I had to get another student to walk him to the nurse while I called my CT back

into the room to take the other student to the office. All of the students did a great job focusing

back in when I was able to return to teaching. We used our reward system to show them that

we appreciated them for sitting quietly while we worked out the issue. To get the students

engaged in the lesson, I had them repeat each number after me and then write the number

after I did. Students love to be praised for their work, so I made sure to recognize each

students’ numbers after writing them. The number writing poems also helped to engage the

students.

My initial perception of the students learning in the first lesson was very positive. The

students did very well with listening and using the poems to help guide them through writing

each number. After we were finished writing 0-5 on the first day, I had each student come up

and write a number, then tell the class what number they wrote. Other than a few students

writing their numbers backwards, they did a very good job writing and identifying their

numbers. The first two days of the lesson went very smoothly, but as we moved into 11-20 the
students began to struggle a little bit more. Small groups helped for sure, but the students will

need some more help with these numbers. Luckily, the students only need to know how to

write the numbers 0-10 on our first progress report. This will give us some more time to get

that extra practice in. Only one student had a very difficult time with 0-10, so I really had to

rethink the differentiation strategies that I chose to use. I decided that the student needed that

extra practice with the numbers during small group instruction because I cannot simply focus

on helping him the entire time we are doing whole group instruction.

The results that I got from observing the students in whole group and small group

instruction, proved that the teaching strategies that I used worked. I was able to keep the

attention of most of the students the entire time throughout each lesson. The students were

excited about showing me their numbers and then asking what the next number would be. In

small group, I made the station into a fun game where the students who knew how to write the

numbers would then have to count certain objects and write the number associated with the

number of objects. One thing I want to improve on when teaching my next math lesson, would

be to add more differentiation strategies. Some students who cannot complete the tasks during

whole group instruction, begin to get frustrated and then give up on trying to master it. I would

like to find new strategies that can help me with differentiation for whole group instruction.