Chapter 1, Part 2 Reflection

When creating my unit plan, it has been important for me to take into consideration my students' funds of knowledge and creating a lesson plan that is relevant to real life scenarios they may encounter. When creating my unit plan, I knew it would have to be centered around mathematics. I made observations of where my students were lacking and collaborated with my mentor teacher to determine that a lesson on telling time would be a great thing to implement into instruction. Most of my students struggle to read an analog clock or determine elapsed time. This skill is critical for their life experiences. Thankfully, I have flexibility with the curriculum in my classroom and it has been helpful to plan lessons that meet my students needs. I firmly believe becoming response to students' needs is imperative to their success. For this lesson, I really would like to focus on engaging students through real life time telling scenarios and increasing cognitive demand by having them complete critical thinking word problems. When planning my lessons I am really focusing on utilizing their background knowledge and ensuring it is culturally relevant. I would like to assess my students by having them think of a situation they encountered where they had to calculate the elapsed time, for example seeing a movie. The students will then use that scenario to write out their thought and problem solving process in how they determined the correct amount of elapsed time. My students enjoy the opportunity to be creative and I think this is a great way to also tie in writing to the lesson. The most important thing educators should consider when unit planning is meeting the needs of their students in a way that is meaningful to their lives. I knew that if I were to create a lesson and not allow for any creativity that students would likely not respond well to it. Providing students with the opportunity to be creative and make the lesson meaningful to them has been successful from what I have observed.