Morgan Hymes
November 12, 2014
Motivation and Student Learning
3rd Grade/ Mathematics (3.8)
This lesson plan focuses on mathematics 3.8 which is: students will
determine, by counting, the value of a collection of bills and coins whose total value
is $5.00 or less, compare the value of the bills and coins, and make change. The
lesson is for students to pair up and count the money that is in various bags with
their partner. Each bag has different combinations of money that can be exactly $5,
more or less than. This gives the students a chance to practice with different
combinations of coins or dollar bills. The lesson uses a real life example that the
classroom has been given a gift certificate of $125.00 worth of books. Before they
can purchase these books, the student’s must practice counting their money, which
helps the students relate to their own lives.
One student will count the money, then write down what they counted.
Their partner will then count it as well and compare what they both counted. If the
students get the same outcome they move onto the next bag and if they do not agree,
they both work together and recount the money slowly. This gives students the
opportunity to succeed because they are working together towards a common
goal and can help one another if one student miscounts. They are working with a
partner so the student will less likely to feel embarrassed if they miscount. This also
allows for students to interact with peers because they are working together. Once
they finish a bag they have to switch with other groups, which then has them
interacting with more students.
This lesson has vocabulary words that are mixed into the lesson like: skip
counting, collection, change, ect. These words will help the student’s vocabulary
grow and helps them when going through the lesson with their peers because it will
allow them to work together using extrinsic words.
For the second part of the lesson, they will show how the make change for $5
using counting on and mentally calculating the difference. The teacher then passes
out fliers for the books that the students are allowed to purchase a book; books
purchased cannot cost more than $5. Once you observe that all the students have
chosen a book less than $5, have them use the bags of money they have to calculate
the change they would receive if they purchased that book. This is providing the
students with choice, because it’s allowing them to pick out a book they would
want, without giving them a random number and then having the students to
calculate the numbers needed. This also demonstrates that this lesson includes
novelty/variety elements because they have the sense of “shopping” for the books
they want. I think this provides the student’s with a lot of motivation because they
will want to be able to see what book they can get and how much money they will
get back.
This lesson encompasses a lot of Brophy’s strategies to help maximize the
student’s motivation for learning. Most of the steps of this lesson touch on some of
the techniques used. I would make a minor change to this lesson by making it a
realistic goal to buy something with their fake money, like pencils, erasers, or
stickers. I think it will really motivate the student’s if they are actually getting
something at the end instead of pretending to buy the books. This could potentially
confuse the students and disappoint them if they are not actually getting books.
Overall I feel like this math lesson touched on a lot of Brophy’s strategies and would
really motivate students to learn and understand what the lesson is trying to teach.