Please follow the lesson plan format for this week’s assignment and include aspects of constructivism within your Motivation, Procedure, and Assessment Activity to teach mathematics. The most important guideline to reflect is experiences and activities that allow first-grade children the opportunity to construct their own knowledge. Make sure to reference the NJ Curriculum Standards for First Grade Mathematics posted on this week’s module. attached is the lesson plan format. also the links for the curriculum standards.
1. (NJ Curriculum Learning Standards for First Graders (Language Arts and Mathematics Curriculum Should be Integrated) Select Mathematics curriculum standards that you will address in this week’s plan. It is expected that all lessons and activities integrate Language Arts standards so make sure to select Language Arts standards to accompany your Mathematics standards. The Language Arts standards you select should be aligned with aspects of what you expect the student to learn during the lesson.
2. (Learning Objective(s)): Create a learning objective(s) at an appropriate level of difficulty for your first grade students. Refer to Bloom’s Taxonomy of Objectives to create the lesson objective(s). Utilize your knowledge of child developmental milestones to target the learning levels of your first grade students this week, and provide instruction that aligns with information learned about Constructivism. Remember to integrate mathematics instruction with language arts concepts. For example, “The children will be able to verbally explain how they solve an addition problem.” or “The children will describe in writing, how they solved the puzzle.” would be one objective of the lesson related to language arts.
3. (Motivation) Motivate students through a building of their prior background knowledge about the mathematics topic you are introducing. Make sure to have materials prepared and described, that will allow you and the children to demonstrate the concept physically. For example, for patterning, make sure to have items to use to exemplify simple patterns. Realistic pictures could be used, as well. Make sure to provide a description of the pictures related to the mathematics concept you introduce. Find out what the students know about the topic and what else they would like to learn asking open ended questions inspired by Bloom’s Taxonomy.
4. (Procedure/Teacher Input)
Describe how you will teach the mathematics concept through a constructivist approach. Include a description of materials you prepared or purchased and explain how you will use the materials.
State the questions and dialogue you would use as instructional input.
Showcase at least one vocabulary word through a labeled realistic picture and provide instruction to teach this word.
Incorporate an active learning activity that relates to the mathematics concept you present, allowing children the opportunity to experience constructing their own knowledge about the topic.
5. (Assessment Activity) Create an independent assessment activity for you to observe and assess if each individual student has mastered the topic. You could create a worksheet to assess or even have the children work in pairs with the materials you created, in order to observe mastery.
6. (Individualizing/Modifying the Curriculum and Providing Student Accommodations) Include a description of what you will do to re-teach children who were unable to master the concept, perhaps providing additional time the following day to revisit the concept or pair a child who requires more practice with a child who understood the topic, directly following your lesson. You may create an additional worksheet for lower level students and plan to reteach, one on one or in small groups at a later time that day.