Instructional Decision-Making



Instructional Decision-Making

The Design for Instruction was not as well laid-out and fine-tuned as it could have been before I began teaching. My cooperating teacher believed more in taking lessons day by day, depending upon how students responded to a particular lesson. After all, teachers need to be flexible. Though I agreed with her philosophy to an extent, it got me into a bad habit of being lazy and not having activities, projects, and papers as planned or prepared, as they should have been. Students would become interested in activities such as the Cultural Identity Activity and we would end up spending the entire class period on the activity and discussion about the activity. Other times, I thought certain journal questions would motivate and inspire students to dig deeper on issues and themes but this would not happen. Two examples of culturally appropriate instructional decision-making that I made based on students’ learning or responses were the Cultural Identity Activity and Reflective Paper/Presentations on teenage women’s search for identity in American society.

The Woman Warrior proved to be a challenging novel for some of the students to read. Two of the students (A and B) had no trouble comprehending and discussing the meaning of the text, but the other four had difficulty grasping the cultural and time period differences between China and America. This led me to slow down my instruction and I began to require students to take interactive notes (see Appendix M) before, during, and after reading each chapter. (This was optional originally). By requiring the Interactive Note-Taking Method, students were able to list page numbers where they found confusion or had questions, which enriched our discussion and their journals. I also recommended and Cliff Notes to review, either before or after they read the text, to aid in their comprehension and insight. We also read aloud as much as possible, but time constraints were an issue.

I provided my own notes for each chapter (see Appendix K), as well as vocabulary from that the students might struggle over, due to the cultural differences. We reviewed the vocabulary before each chapter and I had the students highlight some words that I felt were very important for their understanding. My notes on the novel contained questions for the students to think about and answer, since we would discuss them during class.

Due to the lack of time and the difficulty some students had with interpreting the culture of the text, LG2 could not be properly assessed. This did not dishearten me much, since this was the learning goal that students excelled at the most. I handed out Effective Tips for an Oral Presentation (see Appendix N) that we discussed in class, so that students would know how to better present in front of an audience and know how to give better presentations, but we never really had the opportunity to go over how to present papers.

I could not formatively assess both LG 2 through Oral Presentations and LG 3 though Reflective Papers due to time constraints. I was forced into a dilemma and had to make a choice. Since students had given two presentations already and excelled greatest on the pre-assessment for LG 2, I chose to formatively assess LG 3. There was simply not enough time to assess both goals. But I made the attempt to somewhat assess LG 2 and mesh the formative assessments for LG 2 and LG 3, by having students present their papers to the class and read some sections from it. I feel this could have been helped if I had given the students one or both of the assignments at the beginning of the novel, so that they could be working on them while reading, understanding, and discussing the text.

As a formative assessment for LG 3, students had to write a Reflective Paper on the novel, reflecting on their search for their identity, in high school as a woman in American society, as well as reflect on the cultural activity that made them think about what makes up their identity. I felt picking the Reflective Papers over the Oral Presentations to formatively assess, would improve student progress in LG 3 because after much discussion, critical thinking, the Cultural Identity Activity, etc., I felt students were at a point where they needed to, and were ready to, speak and write about the novel. They needed to reflect on their journey to find their identities, as well as reflect on the main character’s confusion in trying to discover her self. After so much class discussion students needed to personally reflect and then interweave the novel with their own experiences.

Because of some of the students’ confusion with the novel, time was an issue with just about everything. I do not feel that I gave the students enough time to complete the Reflective Paper/Project or Post-Assessment. I could not give them time in class because we had to spend so much time answering questions and clarifying issues. I think most of the students felt rushed and slightly overwhelmed with everything at the very end of the unit.

Ultimately, I am very glad I slowed down instruction to aid in students’ comprehension and that I changed my mind about Presentations. Altering my teaching allowed students to focus on the Reflective Paper, gave them the opportunity to reflect on the whole experience of the novel, and had them to put their thoughts into words. I feel students gained more from completing the Reflective Paper because it entwined all of the activities and was relevant to them.

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