Lab Day

My partner and I have been having difficulty observing the students in class time due to conflicting time schedules. Since we haven't observed it is difficult to say whether or not it is truly a conflict with the students memorizing or if it is the teacher who is making an error in teaching.  So in this particular instance we are relying on the word of the teacher.

We have also changed our solution slightly. Instead of making an individual test for each student to complete on their own, we are having the teacher be involved as well. The teacher will hold up a series of multiplication facts on flash cards for only a couple seconds for the students to see. The student must then write down the answer as fast as possible. This should motivate the students to pay attention and memorize their facts.

The objective is to eventually have students hand in their answer sheets with no blank spaces.

This could also be turned into a group "game".

If this method is applied every day before the lesson plan begins it works as a great refresher for the students and doesn't take up too much class time.

Goals & Objectives

Goal: Students should be able to master  basic multiplication tables and facts.

Objective: Have students complete __#___ of problems in__(amount of time)__


Ways to assess and evaluate achievement:


Knowledge: Short answer

• Mark progress by doing a series of  "assessments" that, at first, have a small amount of problems in a larger margin of time
• Slowly increase amount of problems and decrease the amount of time

Project Brainstorming

• The Subject Matter Expert (SME) on my project with Michelle is the teacher of the 6th grade class, Ms. Stormy Derrow. She is the one who will provide us with the main information such as the multiplication facts that she wants the students to learn. She will also be able to provide us with insight about each individual student and how they learn best from observations.

• The Target Audience is the students in the 6th grade class. We hope to improve their multiplication skills so that they can be better prepared to apply it to real life situations.

• We are choosing to combine both the "Product-Oriented Model" and the "Classroom-Oriented Model" in our design plan. We are still unsure if we will need both, but we hope to make a new "product" that could help the students become more fluent in multiplication

• The learning perspectives that we plan on using are a combination of behaviorism and constructivism. If the students  are presented with a method of learning, and then repeat this method continually they will begin to understand the multiplication facts. Hopefully as they begin to understand they will use their cognition to build an inner "reasoning" as to why a certain answer is correct.

• For our Design plan we are going to use Smith and Ragan's "Discrepancy-Based Needs Assesment". The 5 steps to this process are:
1. list the goals of the instructional system
2. determine how well the identified goals are already being achieved.
3. Determine the gaps between "what is" and "what should be ".
4. Prioritize gaps according to agreed-upon criteria
5. Determine which gaps are instructional needs and which are most appropriate for design and development of instruction

         When we meet with our SME we will have a much larger series of indirect questions that will be    easier for her to understand. The questions will be aimed so that based on her responses we can, on our own time, find the answer to the steps above.

First Steps

For my instructional design project I am working with Michelle Ackerman. We are working with a 6th grade teacher named Stormy Derrow who is having difficulty with teaching her students to memorize multiplication facts among other things. My partner sent her an email about our LTLE 385 class and our project and that we were interested in helping her and her students. This is the email we received back a couple days ago.

Hi!         Yes, she mentioned you may be contacting me.  One of the bigger issues that could be easily met by your project would be repetitive, drilled practice of multiplication facts.  So many of our students struggle with these this year (which they originally learned in 3rd grade), that it really inhibits their ability to master more challenging math skills.  Unfortunately, due to the strict curriculum, we have very little time to brush up on these multiplication facts .          However, if you would prefer a different route, you could also address sight word identification, social skills, tracking IEP goals for SPED students, etc.  Just let me know what you think! I am sure I can come up with more, if I think more about it. Hope this helps! Stormy  My partner and I will continue corresponding with her and we hope to eventually go to her classroom to make some observations.