Standard Three: Adapting Instruction for Individual Needs
The teacher understands how students differ in their approaches to learning and creates instructional opportunities that are adapted to diverse learners.
Adding LIke Fractions Anchor Chart
I created a Adding LIke Fractions Anchor Chart to help my students see a visual representation of the information they were going to be learning. I have heard and learned that a high percentage of students are more visual learners than auditory learners. With having this charts it helped adapt my lesson to meet the needs of all diverse learners. This was a new concept to teach to my 5th graders and so on the first day, I wanted to give them a introduction to the concept they would be learning. With this anchor chart, I wrote key words and steps in all different colors to help students see the importance and difference with certain information. I had students repeat certain words as went along to help keep students engaged, along with them discussing certain ideas they may have as we went through the chart together. Most of all, I wanted to use the anchor chart to help those students who learn more by seeing visuals along with auditory.
Jeopardy Review Math Game
This was such fun math game for my 4th grade students and I loved seeing the amount of engagement going on of their learning. We had been reviewing fractions, decimals, multiplication, and division for the last few weeks so I decided to create a fun review game for them. Students were grouped into teams and had to decided on a category to choose from, just like the regular jeopardy game. All questions were posted on the white board to see. Every student in the class had to solve every problem whether it was their question or not because they never knew when they might be able to steal some points if a team got the wrong answer the first time. Students solved each problem on their own white board and would discuss their way of solving the problem with their group. I told the groups to be like mini teachers for their groups if they had a team member who was unsure how to solve a problem. They had to collaborate and then each group member had to have work shown on their white board for the whole group to receive the points. With this activity I wanted to make sure a variety of approaches were met, which included, visuals, auditory, collaboration, individual work, and them processing the information on their own and then explaining how they solved to the class and team members. Students had to adapt to being able to explain their work in order for others to understand.
Ordering Decimals
As a review for ordering decimals, I created a wide range of decimals that had to be ordered from least to greatest. Students had a great time figuring this out and it also challenged them as well. At first, I had them play War with the one stack of decimals to get them familiar with comparing decimals. Then, I had them work in partners to order their decimals. After that, I had three groups work together that all had different colored paper with decimals on them. This was the tricky part, in which students had to adapt to the idea of working together to sort out these decimals. Some of the pairs had kept theirs in order from the first sort, while others had mixed them all back together. This was a two day process and it was amazing to see the difference from day 1 to day 2. Students were able to adapt to the obstacles of working in a larger team and how include everyone to participate.