Instructional Decision Making

Instructional Decision Making
When designing a plan for instruction, it is imperative to be flexible since there are a variety of factors that may derail your lessons. Although important to the function of the school, assemblies, special programs, and extraordinary events are just a few examples of the countless variables that may affect the lesson plans that is beyond the control of the classroom teacher. Additionally, the teacher must be flexible since every aspect of a lesson does not always go according to plan. Students may not understand the material as you expected meaning the teacher will need to spend additional time teaching the problematic concepts to ensure that students are successful and ready to move on. Furthermore, activities …show more content…
There were examples of this use in our classroom that students referenced during the class discussion. Additionally, students described magnets being used on their refrigerators to hang their artwork, notes, and/or pictures. Several students discussed toy trains that connected by using magnets. Although these are perfect examples of how many people use magnets in our everyday lives, my desire was for students to learn about ways that magnets make a big impact because of the way they are used in areas of life that most people may not be aware of. There were probably a number of variables that contributed to students referring to only the general uses of magnets. However, the most significant factor in my opinion, is the students’ lack of background knowledge regarding the uses of magnets. At the age of six or seven, students have not had many experiences with areas of life that utilize magnets to make a big impact on our world. Even though students were engaged in the discussion about the uses of magnets, I did not provide them with enough background knowledge to build a clear understanding of how important magnets are in our everyday lives. Because of this, I decided to …show more content…
During the magnet unit plan, I modified my plan an additional time when various disruptions beyond my control completely derailed the time set aside for science on the class schedule. On this particular day I began science by asking students, “Do you think you could make your very own compass?” Students were interested to see if they could actually make a working compass and were on task and following directions as we worked in groups to perform the experiment to create a compass. After completing the compass experiment and receiving successful results, we moved on to our last experiment of the unit. This experiment was called “Through it All.” During this experiment, students worked in small groups to test the strength of the magnetic force field through a variety of objects. Before breaking off into groups and performing the tests of each item, students were required to make a prediction about whether or not they thought a magnet could attract an object through each item to be tested. During this step, students were on task and focused. However, before breaking off into our predetermined groups, our first “push-in” of the year occurred. A “push-in” is where a teacher brings in a small group of students to provide services to them. The