Alan, Olivia, Roma, Sam, Sydney, Whitney

https://www.teacher.org/lesson-plan/ice-cream-cones-baseballs-and-cans/

Engaging Students in Learning

● Using instructional and motivational strategies that promote students’ active
involvement in tasks that increase their knowledge, skills, and abilities related to
learning objectives
● Contrast with student participation in tasks that are not well designed (do not
indicate understanding of development and student-focused instruction) and/or
implemented and do not increase student learning.

Structure
● Organized by: objectives, materials, procedure, assessment, and differentiation
● Specifies length of time and also mentions alignment with the core standards
● The Procedure part is split up into different sections
○ Opening Lesson
○ Body of Lesson
■ Modeling
● There are three bullet points underneath the section for
‘Modeling’. The suggestions are to ask students what kind of
question can be asked about the sample objects besides
finding their volumes, to allow students to respond to the
questions, and to tell students they need to use containers to
measure and create word problems for peers.
■ Guided Practice
● This section provides step-by-step instructions for the
activities that the students are being asked to complete in
class.
■ Independent Practice
● This section has students two objects from home and create
3-5 word problems using those new objects
● The last part of the lesson is the closing. Here it states the students will share
homework and have discussions on why they believe this lesson was important.
This helps the connection between math and the real world.
● The differentiation section is really interesting as it correlates with student need
and understanding

Instruction
● This lesson asks the students to bring in objects from home, giving them
instruction a week or two in advance of the lesson
○ Brings in home lives and other interests
● Once the objects are brought in, the students are paired off and given
instructions to determine the volume of each object
○ Intentional work on the mathematical procedures while collaborating with
their partner
 ○ A more practical approach to checking the students’ understanding
● Students are asked to create their own word problems to share with their partner
○ Peer collaboration
○ Students are encouraged to be creative with their word problems
● Once coming up with the predetermined number of questions, students
exchange and solve
○ Another example of peer collaboration within this lesson but the students
are also able to showcase their knowledge of the content. If they are able
to reproduce the content in the form of an engaging question, they have a
clear understanding of what is being taught to them
● At the end, students are encouraged to discuss the importance of accurately
knowing the volume of certain objects
○ Students recognize real-world examples of this lesson
● Modification & differentiation section discusses possibly using student created
word problems on a test or a quiz
○ This could help students to feel like what they are doing matters

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4

Students are Students are Students are Students are

participating in participating in engaged in learning engaged in learning
tasks that are learning tasks or tasks that address tasks that develop
vaguely or activities primarily their abilities to their abilities to
superficially focused on literal construct meaning. construct meaning.
related to the central comprehension of
focus/concept being the concept.
taught.

This lesson falls mostly into the Level 3 section. The reason for this is in the closing of
the lesson they students are only asked to discuss the importance of this lesson. While they do
bring in items from home, they do not really do anything more than measure. It would be more
beneficial to apply it to real life scenarios in a way other than just a conversation. Clearly, the
abilities of the students are addressed but they are not given opportunities to thoroughly
develop those abilities in this activity. Throughout the whole lesson, the students are asked to
be creative and they can also work in pairs. Making a math lesson fun with these aspects can
keep the students engaged in learning.