Curriculum and Lesson Plan Analysis Education Curriculum

Education Curriculum: Curriculum and Lesson Plan Analysis

Assignment 3

Standard

The standard selected for the Math lesson plan is NBT.7 for base ten numbers. The school aims and goals that meet the standard are related to the students’ understanding of the daily activities within the lessons. For this, the school aims to make sure that each student is on the same page as the lesson suggests stopping when most of the students do not understand it completely. There are also criteria set for differentiated learning for struggling students. 

Skills, Content Knowledge, and Dispositions

The standard inculcates the mathematical disposition of senses, using concrete drawing or models, number charts, place value charts, and simple shopping ads and worksheets. Visual learning is effective for finding solutions in math compared to auditory or kinesthetic learning (Putra, Budiyono, & Slamet, 2017). 

Students develop skills, and content knowledge is developed among students with reasoning and operating upon the math formulas for working on decimals. The written methods for working out the solutions is another useful skill to learn math efficiently, included in the selected standard. 

Curriculum Goals Derived from the Standard 

The standard integrates adding decimals to hundredths with concrete models or drawings. It is accompanied by the curriculum goals of making students understand the new concepts and ensuring that every student easily comprehends the new lesson to the last attempt. Instructors are included in the lesson plan for this one-to-one help or guided instructions by the class. 

Instructional Goals or Curriculum Objectives

As mentioned above, the instructional goals and the curriculum objectives are aligned with the standard since the teacher’s explanation, accommodation, and guided practice with monitoring are some of the strategies used for this intention. Some of the examples are modeling with an explanation of how decimals are added, instructional support of how the lesson is delivered, which would with the help of coins, and checking whether the students understood in the end, which would be in the form of adaptation for the struggling students who the advanced student would help in one-to-one work form. 

The skills, content, and dispositions are matched with the instructional goals since the primary goal is to make students understand the new lesson. It is ensured that the teacher would not move forward, and the lesson would be stopped there and then until the struggling students are not helped out, and everyone is not on the same page. Volunteers would also be chosen to assist such students in making classroom supervision effective. 

Instructional Objectives

The instructional objective as students add decimals with concrete models addresses the standard’s skills, content, and dispositions. This is the very factor itself that is mentioned within the standard. Besides, the materials and resources used to accompany the characteristics in the standard citing “concrete model or drawing” for which written methods could align with the student’s reasoning of the addition. 

Summarizing and reflecting on what has been learned in the lesson also depict that the instructor would again confirm that the students have completely figured out how to add decimals with the help of resources and not calculators. Working with their mind, thinking analytically, and using senses with seeing and touching with hands are inculcated intelligently within the lesson plan to connect to the standard directly. 

Learning Activities and Instructional Resources 

The use of resources is vast since every activity includes using a place value chart and not a calculator or phone for adding the decimals and finding their answers. The instructional objective to add the decimals with concrete models is met with a number chart, general vocabulary sheet, flashcards, place value chart of whole numbers and decimals, simple shopping ad, and worksheet. McDonald’s’ menu with prices in decimals has been used for an activity in the anticipatory set, feasible for the explanation of adding decimals. As mentioned previously, evidence suggests visual learning is the most effective; keeping this in mind, fake money and place value charts instead of calculators are extensively used. This encourages reasoning with visual help, cited in the standard, and meets the learner’s objectives. 

The learning activities also adapt to the culturally diverse students’ needs. The resources are diversity inclusive since the extension of time for those who have differentiated learning needs is allowed with an addition of the criteria of completing half the worksheet as an accomplishment that they understood the new lesson. The same could not be said for the instructional resources since McDonald’s ad, and its worksheet would impact culturally diverse students, for example, is unclear. Besides, students with physical disabilities, such as those who have a hearing problem or are partially blind, might be excluded from the instructional activities as the resources might not be helpful for them. 

Assessments

The assessments are planned in group work between students who cannot understand well and those who have quickly grasped the new lesson. This could be a homework assignment but with an achievement criterion that they should complete with 80% accuracy. It would certainly mark their interpretation, in which case they would be progressed to the next lesson. Those who have not met this criterion would need more practice. Also, a thumb-based assessment is included to check whether the students are confident enough about their learning and if they can meet the learning target. 

Use Of/Lack of Technology   

There is a lack of technology integration since the resources used for enabling students to add decimals are only in print form. Learning through technology has not been focused in the lesson plan, although visual learning could have been more effective if it had been through technological resources. Games on iPads and internet websites for learning with appealing video games prove helpful in this case. It is expected that if games and technological contact were included in the lesson plan, the struggling students might learn faster than expected. 

Feedback/Suggestions 

To re-organize and improve the curriculum, there are some suggestions based on the evidence from the literature. 

· Alignment of the lesson plan with technology is highly beneficial since math learning games have produced positive results for diverse students, especially those whose native language was not English. Research showed male students of grade 4 who were not native English speakers quickly learned math concepts with daily use of computer games (Kim & Chang, 2010). Playing games should be included in the homework tasks for reaching a degree of mastery of at least 60-70% accuracy compared to those who have already grasped the concept. For high levels of learning, particularly with increased motivation, engagement, focus, and attention, computer games would play a chief role in making math easy for the students as they would enjoy learning new concepts more conveniently (Vankus, 2021).