Rational for lesson plan

(why teaching strategies and learning activities meet the needs of the
students in the class)
Prior Academic Knowledge One of the assets the students possess is their
prior knowledge in math. This class has had
many math lessons from the Math Expressions
book. This curriculum is designed to teach
math practices and fluencies to the students.
These math practices and fluencies are seen
multiple times throughout the different lessons
taught from the book. The content-specific
learning goal that students will be learning is
modeling and identifying equivalent decimals.
The lesson will use student’s prior knowledge of
base-ten patterns for whole numbers and build
on it to add base-ten patterns for whole
numbers and decimals. Students also have
prior knowledge on reading and writing whole
numbers to 1 million using different forms of a
number. This lesson will build on to include
reading, writing, and comparing decimals to
thousandths.

Learning Needs of students: The lesson plan incorporates different

modalities of learning which allows students
with different learning modalities to be
successful. The lesson also builds on students’
cultural experiences by adding to their prior
knowledge. An asset students’ bring from their
cultural experiences is they often take a
different approach to solving problems. By
adding to these students approaches they are
given many different approaches to solving the
math problems in this lesson. The students in
this class bring different funds of knowledge.
One of the funds of knowledge brought into the
classroom is sports especially by focus student
2. Incorporating the topic of sports into the
lesson being taught allows these students to
become more interested in what is being
taught. With their interests peaked students
will have better focus during the lesson. The
socioeconomic background of the students in
this class is an asset. The students have a
higher socioeconomic status and because of
that they have many resources available to
them. These students bring in their own iPads
 or chrome books which allows them to use
MobyMax when they complete their work
early. In MobyMax students work on fluency
games, whiteboard activities, and skills review.
Students are also able to take assessments
allowing the teacher to see how they are doing
and where they might need additional help. A
learning need that students might have is
organization. FS2 and FS3 will need help with
organization and there are a few other that will
need help as well. For these students a
resource that is available to them is a decimal
place value flip chart. Students will be able to
use the chart to check their answer.
Organization will be key as students will need
to line up the math problem in the correct
place value or their answer will be incorrect.
Allowing them to use the decimal place value
chart will allow them to check their answers
and see where they made a mistake. Students
will also have multiple problems modeled to
them so that they know the steps they need to
take to answer the problem.
Student Learning Activities I picked the learning activities for this lesson to
engage all students no matter their learning
modality. The activities considers the needs for
visual, tactile, auditory, and kinesthetic
learners. Students will analyze what they
learned as they work the problems in their
math workbook. With every math problem
students will be analyzing the knowledge of
place values and comparing those place values.
Students will synthesis prior knowledge with
what they just learned to create a better
understanding of the lesson. In this lesson
students will take prior knowledge of whole
numbers and synthesis it with decimals. This
will be done throughout the lesson and will
even continue into future lessons. Students will
be able to evaluate the work they did in their
workbook. They can evaluate by checking their
answers before they turn in their work. They
will also be able to evaluate the work after it
has been corrected and returned. After the
math lesson students will be able to transfer
their knowledge of decimals and their place
values when learning the next lesson which will
be adding and subtracting decimals. This lesson
 also incorporates the use of manipulatives such
as a decimal place value chart, think-pair-share
where students will answer a math problem
and then share with a partner how they
answered the problem, and models which will
be drawn to represent the decimals in the math
problems

Instructional Strategies: One instructional strategy that will be used

during the classwork portion of the lesson will
be learning stations. There are different
learning stations for students based on their
needs. Students that are gate have the
opportunity to sit in the library which is connect
to the classroom. Students that need more
assistance with their math work often work at
the back table of the classroom. This allows the
me to work with a group of students that might
have more questions or need additional help
learning the steps needed to complete the
math problem. Students can also remain at
their desk if they like. Another instructional
strategy is think-pair-share. During the lesson
students will be asked to solve a problem on
the top of their desk. Once they have their
answer, they will describe to their pair the
person sitting across from them how they
worked the problem. This also gives students
the opportunity to discuss any mistakes they
may have made while they were working out
the math problem. This lesson also
incorporates modeling which will be done at
the beginning. I will model how to compare
decimals with the whole class. I will model
using the docucam so that students can visually
see and hear the steps taken to compare
decimals. Scaffolding will be used in this lesson
as students’ prior knowledge will be tapped
into. Students will have prior knowledge from
prior lessons both in 5th grade and in years past.
This lesson will add on to the knowledge of
comparing whole numbers by adding decimals
to those whole numbers. If students finish the
problems for their workbook early, they will be
asked to go on to mobymax where they will be
able to play fluency games. Mobymax allows
students to continue to work on fluencies that
 they may still need help with. With additional
exposure to these fluencies’ students will start
to master them and will be able to move to the
next fluency. This creates more prior
knowledge for students to access as they
continue with math lessons.

Resources and Materials: For this lesson I choose to use a projector and a
docucam so that students could see on the
board and hear me as I model equating and
comparing thousandths for them. The
docucam allows me to zoom in so that the
problem I am working on is big and allows all
students to see it. This lesson also allows
students to use expo markers on their desktop
so that they can work math problems along
with me. The lesson starts with an I do were I
mode a couple of problems then moves to a we
do were students use their desktop and expo
marker to work the problems with me and
finally it uses the you do were students work
the problems in their math workbook. The text
this lesson uses is the California Math
Expression Workbook. To provide
differentiation for students that are above
grade level in math the lesson uses the text
California Mathematics Course 1 book which
has more challenging problems for students to
work. This lesson also incorporates the use of a
decimal place flip chart that will aid ELL
students and students that need help with
organization such as FS2 and FS3. The chart will
act as a manipulative and a visual aid for
students to check their answers against. There
is only a couple of language demands in this
lesson most of the vocabulary in this lesson is
simple or students have already seen in
previous lessons. The vocabulary words that do
pose a language demand will be used
throughout the lesson allowing students to see
and hear the words being used. Students will
also have an opportunity to pair share the
words meaning so that they can gain a better
understanding of the words.
Assessments for the lesson: For this lesson students will turn in their
workbook page to be graded. The number of
correct problems will indicate whether or not
students understood the lesson. The last
problem in the student’s workbook will be used
to assess students understanding. The last
question asks students to describe a method
they used for comparing decimal numbers. This
last question allows students to reflect on the
work they just completed and to explain how
they worked the problems. This last question
will be used as a formative assessment. This
formative assessment will let me know which
students understood the content of the lesson.
It also will be used to indicate where the
instruction needs to go next.]