Implementation Of My Lesson

Procedure: 

1. Students will come in and sit down around the smart board where the teacher will be standing to direct the students to the correct place for the lesson.
2. The teacher will begin the lesson by reviewing the students' understanding of the previous lesson on perimeter to make sure that the class is ready for the next step. 
3. Reviewing starts by asking the students to discuss in pairs what perimeter means. Then the class will come back together to review how to solve for perimeter up on the board. This is how the teacher will assess the students understanding. 
4. If the class is ready to move ahead to the lesson on area then the teacher will begin to instruct lesson. If the class is not ready to move ahead to the lesson then another math period will be dedicated to helping students master the concept of perimeter enough to understand why area is important for them to learn. 
5. The teacher will have Kidspiration open on the smartboard prior to the lesson. While the students are finishing up their discussions about what they had previously learned about perimeter, the teacher will walk around doing informal assessments through observation.
6. The teacher will bring all of the children back to focusing on the smartboard and then begin to explain what an area of a shape means, why it is important to know and how the students can calculate it using simple counting of unit squares. 
7. The teacher will go through slide one of the Kidspiration lesson plan with the class. On this slide are three examples of rectangles and squares that have had the area counted out for us. The area was written in a multiplication equation but the teacher will guide the students into counting out each block to show how to numbers in the equation were found. 
8. The teacher will move to the next slide and give the students a chance to come up to the smartboard to practice solving for area based off of the word problems provided at the top of the slide. Since there are approximately three slides six students could have a turn unless the teacher creates more slides to practice on. 
9. The teacher will assess student knowledge through the observations made during the guided practice to judge which students are ready to move onto the final artifact. 
10. If the students are ready to move on to calculating the area by counting unit squares in unusual shapes then the teacher will move on to providing an example of the next step.
11. The teacher will show the students how to locate a blank page of graph paper that they will use for the activity. 
12. Once the students have located the graph paper the teacher will show an example of their name already drawn onto the graph paper located on Kidspiration on the smartboard.
13. The class as a whole will figure out how to calculate the area and come to a total area of the entire name. 
14. Then the class will break apart individually to design their own name on Kidspiration. (The length of some student's names might cause a problem due to lack of space, so if this becomes a problem for students have them design a nickname instead). Students will create their names in unit squares before calculating the total area of the name which they will write on the side.
15. Once the time of the lesson is completed the students will be instructed to save their work as a pdf file and email it to the teacher as their final artifact that will be used in assessing the students' understanding of area. (In our class, the students will submit their pdf files to the class discussion board on BBLearn for review by the teacher at a later time). 

Technology Integration:

The students and the teacher will be interacting with technology in multiple ways throughout the length of the lesson. The teacher will start off the lesson by using the smartboard to give a brief introduction and explanation of the topic (in this case, area). Then the teacher will allow for the students to come up to the smartboard to practice what was taught. All of this will take place before the students are instructed back to their seats to use the computer that is in front of them to design their own artifact based off of their understanding of area.

Differentiated Instruction: Describe how you will differentiate the instruction for each of the following:

• Cognitive delay- If a student with a cognitive delay was present at this lesson I would accommodate accordingly. I would present the lesson in a way that uses that student's strengths. The lesson would be at a pace that allows for the interest of all students but leaves enough space open for longer processing to happen. I would warn the student prior to asking them to answer a question about the lesson and I would allow for more wait time when working with them through examples as well as their final artifact. 
• Gifted- If a student in my class is gifted then they will be given more challenging problems to do during the whole group instruction. I would also ask them if they would be willing to attempt writing their first and last name before calculating the area. I would make sure that they stay interested in the lesson by providing them with a challenge that has something to do with the topic that the class is learning.
• ELL- If I have an ELL student in my class then I will make accommodations to the lesson. I will make sure to provide the lesson content in terms that the student is familiar with and supply them with multiple ways of representing the material being presented. When it comes to the name artifact that I will be assessing I may ask the student to do a word or a song that they love in their native language rather than in English. This will allow the student to complete the same work but in a language that they understand. 

Reflect on:

I am using the instructional methods that I have described above because they will meet the needs of all of my students. The technology will allow the students to produce the final artifact in a way that is most appropriate for the child individually. Technology also helps to create a universally designed lesson that accommodates for a multitude of disabilities and levels. Best practice is about teaching children where they are at and supporting them until they achieve success. With this lesson I can differentiate it based off of the various academic levels that my students are at by making the final artifact easier or more challenging. I am engaging students in creative and higher order thinking by using unusual shapes (like their individual names) to gain practice with the concept of calculating area. The students in my lesson do not stop calculating area with the shapes that are most common. I push my students to thinking creatively about what other shapes could be used to calculate area. Kidspiration is a software that allows for exploration of learning in an age appropriate environment. By using Kidspiration, I am allowing my students to take learning into their own hands through exploration. I will also be using a smartboard. By allowing the students to interact with this technology the children are getting practice through a more hands-on learning approach because they are being forced in to being engaged in the lesson rather than sitting there absorbing the content.