TWS Standard 5

TWS Standard 5 Anthony DeSantis September 22, 2013 EED/495 Debi Stewart

TWS Standard 5 TWS Standard 5 Instructional decision-making At the time of instruction, a decision that had to be made stemmed from the availability of resources for one of the characters being studied. Social studies packets for the unit were printed and distributed. Pictures of the five characters that were running for class representative, were displayed on the cover underneath the title of the unit. A few of the students faces were puzzled while staring at the picture of Clementine. This student teacher immediately knew that a change would have to be made for the small group of students who were assigned to that particular character. Small groups (campaign teams), were created to contain a mixed of students with differing academic and social abilities. Student variation among groups became a contributing factor to having to make a last minute change to the character being campaigned. The character of Clementine did not have many resources and the level of reading needed to recognize character traits and conduct research would have been too difficult for at least two members of the group, regardless of which group it was assigned. The first lesson of the unit was taught as scheduled. That evening, this student teacher decided to replace the character of Clementine with Clifford the Big Red Dog. The next day at school, this student teacher jokingly announced that Clementine had called and dropped out of the race. An emergency call was placed to Clifford to take Clementines place. Using Clifford provided the students with more resources, and familiarity. This student teacher was also able to

TWS Standard 5 provide a way to incorporate technology with research by having the students study Cliffords character traits through an IPAD application. Making the change to the unit caused a sigh of relief from two students. A different member of the group knew that researching the character of Clementine was going to be a challenge. That student took it upon herself to make a trip to the library, so she could start reading the book. When the announcement was made, the student who had made a head start was frustrated at first, but then realized that the research on Clifford would become much easier. As the instructional portion of unit progressed, so did the rest of the responsibilities of the students and teacher in other subject areas. This student teacher noticed that there was a change in the school schedule on a daily basis. Assessments were scheduled into different parts of the day, special team building assemblies were scheduled, small groups for reading were formed, and fire drills, tornado drills, and intruder drills, were implemented in the afternoon. Due to the changes in the schedule, modifications were made to many of the lessons in the social studies unit. One of the last minute changes occurred on the day when the students were to present their campaign posters. The work time for the posters was cut short for an assembly in the afternoon. Extra time was added to the start of the presentation day for the students to complete their posters. Due to the loss of time, this student teacher was not able to instruct the students on how to take character notes during the other presentations. The purpose of the character notes was to assist students in recording information from a presentation, which would then aid them in the decision making process.

TWS Standard 5 After the first election, the students performed a mock debate for the final two candidates. The notes that were supposed to be taken during the presentation were supposed to be the notes for the debate as well. To modify the debate lesson, members of the winning teams debated first while the other students took notes before their turn. Students were unaware of the original loss of time and did not know that they were supposed to take the character notes during the presentations. The effect it had on the students was that were was confusion on what they needed to have filled in on the note taking pages in the packet. It was mentioned that the packet completion was a part of their grade. Many of the students did not have the pages completed but an adjustment was made in the grading.