Go Figure!

In my second entry of my Pedagogical Notebook in the graduate course Exploration of Education that the instructor Jamie Baker gave me an F, my lesson plan started with an engaged lecture format on direct labor and material costs and concluded with "7 Learning Centers". The following are a few examples of the learning centers:

Learning Center 2:  A crossword puzzle comprised of general business math problems with a concentration on problems specific to this lesson.

Learning Center 4:  A Lego building activity where the students choose an item to build.  They will be required to follow the directions to build the item and once the item is built they will determine the COGS of their item; each Lego piece will have a cost associated with it.

Learning Center 6:  A road map for four different businesses will be laid out on a big poster board, a separate one for each business.  The poster will detail many different options available and the price of each option.  Each business will be given an initial sum of money (dimes=$100, nickels=$50, and pennies=$10) and the students will try different options, based upon the choices detailed on the poster, on spending the money until they find an option they are happy with.

Learning Center 7:  A product will need to be assembled consisting of some wood pieces with pre-drilled holes, screws, nuts, and two metal pieces with pre-drilled holes.  There will be a sample one for the students to look at.  They will practice assembling the product and then they will time how long it takes.  They will do this three times to determine an average time and then they will calculate labor cost.

Students had to go to at least four of the learning centers.  I had been taught to give students choices and to offer a variety of activities to support different learning styles.  While the instructor acknowledged the element of choice, she failed to mention my accommodation for learning styles which is a big deal (child centered learning) in the field of Curriculum & Instruction.  She did question Learning Center 2, "appropriate for 7 -12?".  I guess I should of had the students sit in a circle where Alex shares and then tosses the "ball" to Leslie who then shares and tosses the ball to Jill (see blog post dated February 19).

I did receive an 8 out of 10 on this entry which is one of the highest scores I received from the instructor; in another post I will detail all of my assignment grades from instructor Jamie Baker for comedic relief!  On the graduate level an 80% is just one point from failing, but compared to my other scores which averaged below 50%... this entry gets a big WHOO HOO.  Ironically, I used this lesson plan (with less detail in the lecture part because this time around I included additional teaching tactics that I had recently learned) in my How to Teach Business class and the professor commented, "great objective and evaluation".

I received an "A" in How to Teach Business with Dr. Lopez, a veteran professor, and an "F" in Exploration of Education with Jamie Baker, a Ph.D. student.

GO FIGURE!