Summary of Instructional Problem

In the state of Kentucky Social Studies situations of life foc wasting diseases on flipper adult ideas that all events can fall under. These topics argon government and civics, cultures and societies, economics, geography, and historical perspective. (Kidwell, 2012) Geography is one of the big five ideas and is extremely primal. One of the tooshies of geography is the occasion of be skills. Map skills can include manifestly variant a affair divulge, use visual literacy to decode information represented on a map, canvass a route from point A to point B, and using the information on a map to problem solve and yield inferences.At Conway mettle School disciples in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades squander problems with map skills. Specifically, students do non know how to correctly read a map, identify the different types of maps, locate information on a map, and when given a starting point and directions could not correctly trace/navigate to a disclosed or undisclosed end location. For example, when given the starting point for the exploration of the Louisiana land by Lewis and Clark on a map and basic directions students could not correctly follow the path using geographic tools such as maps, atlas, globes, and photos.These argon skills that students exit need as they progress through their give lessonsman pursuits and in life. Based on data collected and a needs analysis on that point is a need for interventions to help resolve this instructional problem. Goal Statement Students in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade at Conway Middle instruct after self-madely comp allowing the instructional unit allow for be fit to apply the map skills that have been learned in the true(a) world. Conway Middle School is an inner city, act 1 schoolhouse. A reality of this is that umteen students rely on riding public transportation to pee to and from school.One of the real world refinements for instruction is that students go forth be fitting to look for at a lane map and navigate from Point A to Point B without the need for electronic devices to assist with mapping. The students allow for be able to correctly give someone directions to observe from their present location to another location. The students go forth examine a map of the bus routes in the city of Louisville and be able to correctly split the buses they would need to stick by on to get home from any location serviced by the Transit power of the River City.Students give use their learned map skills to problem solve using maps, graphs, and charts in other submit domains such as math and science. In addendum to these real world applications students will be able to perform at a level greater or equal to 80% correct on a summative sound judgement given by the instructor that encompasses all the topics from the unit of instruction. The summative assessment will include topics from the desired conditions of this needs analysis. While map skills are a social stud ies topic they have many applications in other core theme areas and within the real world.Many people use them on a daily basis and do not even realize their importance. While the goal of mall school social studies education should be to provide students with the skills to become good citizens and prepare them with the content knowledge and skills necessary to lay a foundation for college and career readiness that will lead to successful high school academic endeavors. The reality is that we must also welcome state standards and often justify site of the most important part of the social studies content. The part of social studies content that I am referring to is the preparation of students to become good citizens.Learner Analysis Before beginning the disciple analysis needs, the researcher feels it important to take moment to introduce the instructional setting of the base. For this student analysis the instructional setting is Conway Middle School in Jefferson County, Ken tucky. Conway Middle School is an inner city, title 1 school. The school is located in the Pleasure Ridge Park community of Louisville, Kentucky. Pleasure Ridge Park is located on the southwesterly side of Louisville. Like many other major metropolitan areas the south side of town is not the most sought after area to live in or be from. several(prenominal) students are bused into the area from other sections of town. Conway Middle School is home to almost 1000 students of various genders and ethnicities. The instructional unit will be taught in a 6th grade social studies schoolroom. The average amount of students in the classroom on a daily basis is 120. The 6th grade is made up of three teams of teachers. distri yetively team has a social studies, math, language arts, and science teacher. Throughout the course of a normal school day a group of 130 students will rotate into each content area for cardinal minutes.Now that the setting has been discussed lets talk about the learner s. Requisite Knowledge and Skills In the state of Kentucky middle school social studies has no pre infallible social studies skills or knowledge needed to be successful. However, there are certain undeniable skills and knowledge that will help all students succeed. First, students need to have interlingual rendition comprehension skills. The students must be able to read and write within one or cardinal levels of the current grade. Second, the students need math comprehension skills.Math skills might sound swordplayny as a pick outd knowledge for social studies but it is true. Without math skills students would be ill prepared to understand the numbers on a map, the dates of events, cost of wars, and even the reasons behind the migrations of millions of people to new areas seeking better jobs, economic success, and untold fortunes. The reading skills are essential because what we know about social studies is made up from artifacts. Many of those artifacts are journals, diarie s, declarations, newspapers, books, and interviews that in order to understand them a person would need reading skills.If a student has the requisite skills listed above the teacher can design an instructional unit that builds knowledge from the ground up. Now that the requisite skills have been discussed lets take a look at the prior knowledge and skills of the learner group. Prior Knowledge and Skills The learner group has been assessed for prior knowledge and skills. A part of the assessment took slur when the researcher administered a test/pre-test for the needs analysis in task 1. The teacher has also been assessing the students as the school year progressed.It was found that despite the best efforts of the learner groups previous teachers many of the students lack basic knowledge of map skills. The students were taught map skills in the 5th grade, but very teeny was retained. During other assessments the teacher found out that many students could remember some of the words r elated to map skill but were unable to define them or their importance. The data from the previous assessments showed that there was a foundation to build upon but essentially the teacher was starting from the ground up when excogitation the instructional unit.Most students knew their directions but very little otherwise. When given an atlas to assist with the pre-test the students average score overall was 52%. The data gathered from the needs analysis and other assessments of prior knowledge and skills will drive the design and reduce of the instructional unit on map skills. Now that prior knowledge and skills have been discussed lets move on to the demographic information of the learner group. Demographic Information The demographic makeup of the learner group is diverse. There are a total of 130 students in the group.62 of the students are male and 68 are female in gender. The ethnic makeup of the males is as follows 49% African American, 40% white, 10% Latino, and 1% Asian. T he ethnic makeup of the females is as follows 53% African American, 41% white, 5% Latino, and 1% Asian. The females total the males by almost 10%. 55% of the students come from single parent households. The ages range from 10 eld old to 12 years old and are of varied maturity levels. With over fractional of the students orgasm from single parent households, parental support is sometimes at low level.Having a majority of the students organism female and/or African American influences the way in which the teacher must design the instructional unit. The demographics can sometimes make it difficult to design instruction in a way that is devil relevant and interesting for all students. A large with taking into placard the demographics of the learner group the teacher must account for the learner groups attitudes towards the topic when designing instruction. Learner Group Attitudes Attitude is everything. When designing a unit of instruction a teacher must take into account the lea rner groups attitudes toward the topic, education, and teachers.That might sound like an easy task but it is not. Students bring past experiences and attitudes toward teachers and education into the classroom every day. This has a profound influence on the knowledge environment. For example, almost half of the students that this teacher sees on daily basis say social studies is their least favorite subject at school. Some of those same students attribute this to previous teachers and the experience that they have had. Other students like social studies but hate map skills calling it boring and useless. These students are the ones that make designing instruction a little more time consuming. To combat thenegativity towards social studies the teacher must go out of his/her way to build the relationships with students to shelter a mutual respect and hopefully instill a lifelong love of acquisition. While construction the relationships the teacher is able to design instruction in a way that is relevant to each student and interesting. Despite best efforts there will always be one or two students with a negative attitude towards the topic. One way that I have found to make learning fun and interesting is through the use of whole brain precept. Whole brain teaching accounts for all learning styles and at the same time manages behaviors in the classroom.Speaking of learning styles, lets take a look at the unique characteristics of the students in the learner group. Unique Characteristics Within the teachers class there is a diverse group of learners. They are made up of various ethnicities from many different backgrounds. First, lets take a look at the learning styles of the group. About halfway through the school year the teacher was introduced to a new to him style of teaching. That style was called Whole Brain Teaching. The teacher is deliverance this up because of the pastiche of learning styles in his classroom.Those learning styles are kinesthetic, visual , and auditory. When the program was implemented in this teachers classroom he surveyed the class to ask about their learning style. It was very informative. Over half of the class said that they learned best in more than one way. At first the teacher was worried. He thought to himself how am I difference to teach to all of these learning styles? I will spend all my free time designing instruction. It really wasnt that bad. The whole brain teaching method allowed the teacher to reach the students that were kinesthetic learners by incorporating movement in the classroom.The visual learners learned by watching the teacher teach, other students teach, reading, and by watching short video clips mixd into the lessons. The auditory learners perceive the teacher teaching, listening to other students during the turn and teach portion of the lesson, by listening to the oral reading of exerts, and by listening to the video clips incorporated into the lessons. The unique characteristics of the learners means that the teacher must design lessons that incorporate visual, auditory, and kinesthetic pieces into the instruction.At times it can be very difficult to design a lesson that reaches all learning styles. This only takes into account the unique characteristics of a little over three quarters of the class. Almost 15% of the class were/are ECE or e special(a) Education Students. The special education students have a variety of diagnoses that range from Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Other Health Impairment, Learning Disorder, Behavior Disorder, to Oppositional resistant Disorder. Those are a wide range of diagnoses and they must be taken into account as well.In addition to those diagnoses one student suffers from seizures that can be triggered by flashing lights. What does all of this mean? It means that a great attention to detail must be used by the teacher when designing the instructional unit and the learning environment. Th e teacher has a binder with all of the Individual Education Plans and a spreadsheet to make instructional design easier. When designing the instructional unit and assessment the teacher must take into account the accommodations that these IEPs allow.Accommodations As stated above 15% of the class is made up of ECE or Special Education students. These students all have IEPs that allow for accommodations. The accommodations are as follows extended time, paraphrasing, the use of a reader, the use of a scribe, prompts and cues, redirection, preferential seating choice, and a special behavior plan. When designing the instruction the teacher accounts for extended time by creating fill in the blank note sheets for all students. This way the students arent singled out by others.Paraphrasing is allowed for when the teacher is reading the text or lecturing. Usually it is qualified for the students with a argument that starts out with in other words it means this. The reader is allowed for d uring the lessons and during assessments. During assessments the teacher reads each question out to the class. When that is not possible a qualified special education profession will take the students that require reader to another location to administer the test. The one student that is allowed a scribe has a special electronic device that he carries with him each day.The lessons are scanned into a document for him to nail down on the device. Assessments are handled in the same fashion. The students that are allowed prompts and cues receive them throughout the lesson. Sometimes it is just a matter of walkway by and pointing something out to the student. At other times it requires a verbal cue or redirection. 2 students have IEPs that allow for preferential seating because they have very poor eyesight. At the beginning of the school year I asked the two students in private which seat they would prefer in the front row.Those two students pointed out their seats and have been in th em ever since. When the lesson or classroom is moved around these students get preferential seating. One student has a special behavior plan. He is a very new student. This student only has an IEP because his disruptive behavior sometimes requires removal from the stimulus of the class. All students that are allowed accommodations base on their IEPs receive them. Performance Context The performance context in which the students are expected to use the new skills and knowledge has several locations.Based on the real world instructional goal the students will go be able to go out into the city and do certain tasks but for the class the students will practice these in a safe and controlled environment. For example, one of the goals discusses being able to read a map and give directions to from Point A to Point B. Before this will be employ in the real world students will apply it in the classroom. Am I expression that all the students are going to go give someone directions or ride the bus home? No, what I am saying is that at the completion of the instructional unit the student will be prepared to do these tasks if needed.The teacher has an instructional lesson that involves the students using only a map and or atlas to route a family spend to another state. Through demonstration of using the atlas to correctly route a family vacation the students will have simulated part of the real world goals in a controlled environment. In light of the fact that many students use public transportation to get to and from school the teacher has designed a lesson that over again allows the students to practice this real world activity in a safe and controlled environment.For that lesson all the students will have a copy of the Transit Authority of the River City, the city bus company, TARC for shorts routes. The assignment requires the students to examine the bus routes and correctly list the buses that they will need to ride to get from Conway Middle School to their hous e. When the students complete this assignment they will also have to account for the bus schedule and determine what time to leave, how long they will be at each bus stop, and the amount of time it will take them to get from school to home.One of the performance contexts is in the current classroom and future classrooms. What I mean by this is that after the successful completion of the unit the students will have better map skills that can be applied in this social studies classroom and in other classrooms both in the present and the future. Through a thorough learner analysis the teacher is better prepared to design the unit of instruction to meet the needs of all of his students and prepare them to be successful.