What Difference Does Instruction Make

Carly Rittenour

My Field Experience• P. Elementary School

• 2nd Grade classroom

• 22 Students, 4 boys and 18 girls

• 240 Students in grades Pre-K – 5th

• 99% of students are economically disadvantaged.

Ethnicity This school State Average

Black 81% 16%White 15% 76%

Hispanic 4% 3%Asian or Pacific

Islander 1% 2%

American Indian or Alaskan Native

N/A 0%

MORE ABOUT MY CLASSROOM• My cooperating teacher team

taught with the other second grade teacher. My teacher taught math and social studies to both 2nd grade classrooms and the other teacher taught reading and science.

• 4 of the students in my class had IEPs and received instruction in a resource room for half of the day.

• 1 Student was fully inclusive.

• 6 Students were pulled out each day by the reading specialist.

• A number of the students were on behavior plans and unfortunately I saw one student suspended for fighting.

Learning about Goods and Services

• During my field experience I had the opportunity to teach a social studies unit on the topic of

Goods and Services. I started the unit the second week I was in the field and ended my

instruction the last week I was there. I taught 2 lessons each week. I taught for 45 minutes on

Mondays and 45 minutes on Wednesdays. This all depended on the student’s level of

attention and other factors that contributed to interfering with the lesson such as something

as simply as the weather. I followed the Ohio Learning Standards for 2nd grade social studies

and the Columbus Public School’s curriculum guide for the 4th grading period.

Strand: EconomicsTopic: Production and Consumption Standard: 15. Most people around the world work in jobs in which they produce specific goods and services.

• I wrote out my first lesson plan in detail, including all of the learning objectives, steps,

procedures and accommodations. After the first lesson I did a lot of re-teaching and added

new activities to it, making it easy to tweak my written lesson accordingly.

Click on the picture to see my

lesson plan!

Pre-Instruction Assessment

• Before I taught my first lesson I wanted to see what my students' already knew about goods and services, so I asked them what they were. I also wanted to see if they had a deeper understanding of economics by knowing the difference between wanting something and needing something. I gave this assessment at the beginning of the day instead of the regular morning journal time, They were very focused and ready to learn. I did not give the students any background information on why I was giving them the assessment and I did not tell them that we would be learning about goods and services in social studies. With that said, I was pleasantly surprised to learn how many students had a general understanding of what a service was. Goods on the other hand, was a bit more of a challenge for them. This is what I based my first lesson and instruction on. I also noticed that many of the students knew that toys were a want and food was a need. This would be a good foundation for the lessons to follow.

Objectives• The objectives were not only a large

part of my planning process but also an important part of the lesson itself. At the beginning of each social studies lesson we went over the student's learning goals in detail and the students took turns reading them out loud. This helped the students know exactly what they would be learning about and what was expected of them. We kept the objectives posted on the smart board and came back to them whenever we needed to. I noticed that by the end of the third week the students could reiterate the learning goals without looking at the smart board! It was a very rewarding moment.

After going over the student’s pre-assessment I learned that 90 % of the students did not

understand what a good was. Some students were mistaking goods for services and some

students were thinking of good as in the behavior. During the first lesson I made sure to focus

directly on this abstract concept in order to help the students make a real life connection to what

a good actually was.

I introduced Goods and Services with a hands on activity. I brought in a large brown paper bag

filled with different items that represent goods and services such as: a milk carton, vegetable oil,

wood, cotton, shoes, pencils, paper, eggs, and lots of different pictures of service workers. I asked

students to come up one at a time and pull out an item from the bag. I then asked the students a

number of different questions to help stimulate their creative thinking. I asked questions like:

What is this item? Why is it important? Where does it come from? Where do you see it? Is it an

example of a good or a service? After playing this game I taught the students what a good and

service was and then we completed a brainstorming on the smart board.

Over the next few weeks I instructed the students in a number of different ways, making sure to

always come back to our learning objectives.

Instruction

This is what I taught my students:

“Goods are things that can be either used or consumed, and can be

touched or held. Goods are things that are made or grown. Some goods

are manufactured, such as clothes, computers, and cars. Other goods are

grown such as fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Many goods are made from

natural resources, for example wood is used to make pencils, paper, books,

furniture and more.”

“Services: work done for others to provide something needed or wanted.

A service is work that someone does for someone else. A dentist, bus

driver, store clerk, and postal worker are all people who provide services.

Some people provide a service in which they create goods. For example, a

baker provides the service of baking breads and cakes that people purchase

to eat.”

Goods & Services

Brainstorming on the Smart Board

Differentiated Instruction Throughout the Lessons

We completed 3 more activities which

I used as a form of assessment.

(see the next few slides to learn more

about them…)

During whole-group instruction we went back over the definitions of goods and services and posted them on the smart

board so that we could come back to them whenever we needed to.

We completed a chart that on the smart board.

We read a book called “What Do We Buy? A Look at Goods and Services”

We watched a short video from Discovery Education

called Learning About Goods and Services.

Mid-Way Activities/

Assessments

We did three different mid-way activities &

assessments:

1. The first one was a fun activity called “Who am I?”. It involved the students choosing a service job, writing clues for someone to guess the service job and drawing a picture on a poster. Then each student shared their work with the class and their classmates tried to guess which service job they wrote about.

This is the bulletin board that I made using some of the student’s posters! They loved seeing their

work up in the hallway.

Mid-Way Activities/

AssessmentsWho am I?

This is a homemade book that we made using some of the student’s posters!

I used these to check for concept understanding!

Mid-Way

Assessments

2. The second assessment was a 4 page chapter assessment that I got from the students’ textbook. It included multiple choice, fill in the blank, reading a passage, choosing the best answer, and coloring using a key. This one was a bit more difficult, but the students performed very well and I was very proud of them. Out of a possible 3 points, fifteen students received 3’s, six students received 2’ and only two students received a 1.

Mid-Way Activities/Assessments

3. Performance Based Assessment I Have a Job Guessing Game

During this fun learning activity the students used their bodies to act out different jobs. Performance

based assessments are a wonderful tool for students who would rather show you what they know

instead of writing down what they know. During this activity each student had a chance to chose a

strip of paper with the name of a job on it. The job was someone who either provided a service or

produced a good. The student stood in the front of the class and acted out or described the job

written on their piece of paper. For example, a student might say… “I have a job, I provide a service

by…” or “I have a job, I create goods because I…” I made sure to give the students the choice to act

out or describe it in words as long as they did not say the name of the job, so that they felt as

comfortable as possible up in front of the class.

Post- Instruction Assessment

• During the last week of my field experience I gave my students one more assessment. This assessment was similar to the very first one I gave them, which also required some thinking and writing skills. Similarly, I gave this post assessment at the beginning of the day instead of morning journal time. These questions were not as abstract as the pre-assessment and the students had no difficultly completing them. The questions in this assessment were questions that we had covered many times throughout my instruction. From this assessment, the children proved that they knew the content and were ready to move forward in the study of economics.

Data Analysis

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Pre-AssessmentMiddle AssessmentPost Assessment

This graph quantitatively compares the students level of understanding from the pre-assessment, mid-way chapter assessment and post assessment. The data shows that the majority of students had the most improvement mid-way through instruction and continued to improve throughout the rest of the unit. Each assessment was given a score from 1-3, regardless of the number of questions or type of assessment. 1. Content understanding was not evident.2. There was some evidence of understanding.3. There was a significant level of content

understanding.When students did not show improvement I believe it was due to them not being present for the activities the class participated in. Student’s who have difficulty reading and writing may have showed lower levels of understanding in this data as well, but may have shown a positive level of understanding in a different form of assessment such as performance based.

Qualitative Data

• I noticed that the majority of the student increased not only quantitatively but also

qualitatively. The attitudes that I saw at the beginning of the unit were those of

insecurity and students were not confident. During the pre-assessment, the

students’ writing showed that they did not give a lot of thought and some simply

wrote something down for a completion grade. Students were asking me questions

and did not seem to know the answer. By the end of the unit, their attitudes were

positive and much more confident. I worked with only a few students individually

during the post-assessment, the rest of the class did not come up to me with

insecure looks on their faces. They sat at their seats writing with confidence and

completed their work without any help.

Yes, Instruction does make a difference!!!

Implications

I believe that instruction did influence the students learning of goods and services. I think that the wide variety of activities that they took part in, as well as the differentiated forms of assessments made a huge impact in the success of this unit. I think that he most effective form of instruction came from using real life examples and materials to make connections to the student’s every day lives. Learning about the process of producing goods and providing services can be very hard to grasp for young children, but when you put it in terms that they can relate to, it makes it so much more real to them.

What Worked

My favorite part of this experience was creating the “Who am I?” posters with the students. Through this experience I not only got to see if the students understood the content, but I also got to see the students personalities come to life. I really enjoyed reading their clues and looking at their beautiful pictures. One of the little girls in my class chose to write about a Disco Dance Teacher as her service job. I would never have know how much she loved dancing if we had not taken the time to do this activity and share the students work with the class. Taking time to share is so important for the success of activities like these. Sharing gives students empowerment when they are standing in front of the class with all of the focus on them. It gives them confidence knowing how proud you are of them for their wonderful work and it gives the teacher a perfect opportunity to re-emphasize important concepts in the lesson. I am so glad that I was able to keep some of the students posters in a homemade book and I will cherish it forever.

A DISCO DANCE TEACHER! A LIFEGUARD!

Who am I?

What I LearnedI learned so many different things from this experience, but the main thing that I will take away from this is the

importance of creating effective assessments. Assessing what a student knows on a given subject can be difficult,

but as long as teachers get to know their students and how they learn best, they will be able to create the right form of assessment. Some students have a difficult time expressing what they know through writing. Instead of restricting students to only writing, let them show you what they know through another form, such as acting.

This will result in more time available to spend on learning new things and much happier students.