Zackery, Roberson

Educe 450
4/1/16

TWS Student and Classroom Narrative and Topic and Rationale

Specific Students
The students that are in metals one range from 9-12 graders. It is a entry level class so it
can have a variety of grades. For this particular class it is filled with mostly freshmen and
sophomore students. Along with AP students there is also voyager and integrated services
students in this class. The developments levels are quite diverse even in the small bunch of 16
students.

What are the developmental levels, their abilities, their unique needs?
To be honest I am a bit surprised by the range of abilities with the students. Most are
able to do the work and replicate the examples quite well. They finish the assignment quickly.
Some on the other hand struggled significantly with even drawing and copying the layout of a
sheet metal stamping exercise. It was kind of a shock that this 15 year old student struggled
with this component, I had to spend extra time helping him to move forward to progress with the
activity. Others require no such help, they just simply want to put in there headphones listen to
music and bust out the project. Some didnt even require a double check of their work.

Class culture
The culture of this classroom is dynamic. It seems to change a lot varying from day to day.
Sometimes all the students are actively engaged and want to learn. Other times it can be a
struggle to keep them focused on the task. This could be simply because they are waiting for a
tool to become available, because there not enough tools for every student to use the machine
at once. It could be their personal emotions also that might be holding them back. The vast
majority of the time the students are eager to learn and are receptive to receiving or giving help
to other students.

Physical environment
The physical environment that I am in for my Educ 450 class is the shop class in Rocky
Mountain High School. Specifically I am on the metals side of the shop as opposed to the CAD
(computer aided design) and wood shop. This is a metal working shop with welders, manual
mills, lathes, band saws, welders, vises, sheet metal cutters and formers along with a host of
other common metal working tools. It can be filled with loud and noisy machinery working. You
can also see bright flashes of light being generated from the welding equipment that is being
used in the class room.

Context
For some of the students in this class they may not pursue college. Which is okay because
college is not for everyone. This class offers a wide range and exposure a lot of technical and
vocation skills. For example welding a large portion of the class. The average pay of a welder is
close to $16 dollars while a good welder can easily make $25 dollars a hour. This is one of
many different types of vocations exposures available to the students in this class. Another main
part of this class is to learn different skills. These are skills that are relevant to life in variety of
ways. This hands on exposure and gives confidence and problems solving skills to students.
With exposing students to different types of manufacturing processes it can help students want
pursue jobs that they did not know about in the industrial arts.

Demographics
The demographics of this classroom is a close representation of the demographics of Rocky as
a whole. 4 out of 16 students are hispanic. One is mixed race and the rest are caucasian. The
demographics of Rocky can be found in the figure below. It is also a range of standard
performing and low performing students.

Pictures of classroom

Figure 1- Welders and work bench

Figure 3- Main lecture area

Figure 2- Lathes and students working

Figure4- Band saws and sheet metal formers

Prior Knowledge
At this point in the class the students have already gone through two weeks of lecturing from Mr.
Uffer. He has been covering the basics of metals and the metals industry. This had included
different types of metals, their compositions and properties. Advantages of using one material vs
another. Along i with some forming methods in the foundry. Students have also be going over
how to produce and make their own sheet metal box. This included sheet metal cutting, forming
and layout. The key to layout is where to put your tabs so and how to bend edges of box so it
remains straight. Students so far have learned two separate ways of attachment for their boxes.
Spot welding which is a process of running high voltage though the material to make it fuse as
one. Pull riveting which is the other method. This method requires a whole though the material.
Then using special Revit tool you then pull the rivet so it began to mushroom together and thus
securing the sheet metal together.

Instructional strategy
I will be covering a few different instructional strategies when I am teaching this class. First I will
doing a background knowledge quiz to help with my data analysis. Also i will be do a lecture
with a discussion on the different machining operations. I will be focusing on the using the
manual mill and lathe. I will be able to give problems for students to work individually and solve
as a class. Such as finding appropriate cutting speeds and feed rates for a material in question.
After some of traditional lecture is complete i will begin with a hands on laboratory
demonstration. Showing them how to use the machines safely and appropriately. At which point
i will release them to work on the lab. Near the end of the class I will need to do a exit quiz to
gather the second half of my data for analysis.