During any given class period, last minute adjustments to the instructional design already planned by the teacher are very common.  These adjustments are made as a result of the instructor’s judgment of the students’ skill level as well as their attention spans.  Even at the college level, attentions spans of students can sometimes be shorter than the designed instructional activity and it must therefore be adjusted in order to maximize student engagement and learning.

                During my unit of instruction on decimals, ratios, proportions, and percents, there were several times where adjustments were necessary in order to ensure that the students were learning at their highest level due to their skill level and attention spans.   One such time was during a lesson on multiplying and dividing decimal numbers.  During the independent student practice, I placed students into groups and required them to order from a restaurant menu, calculate tax, and divide the tab among the “customers” in the group.  During this activity, my original design was the require each student to take turns being the “waiter,” calculating each order including tax and dividing the tab.  However it quickly became clear that an adjustment was going to be necessary in order to keep the students focused and engaged in the learning process.

                The students very quickly became bored with the idea of taking turns to be the waiter and calculate these tabs repeatedly.  They obviously felt that this was way too much repetition.  There was also some confusion as to how many times they were to order and whether to order the same thing every time, or provide variety in the numbers for the waiter to calculate.  They seemed to become frustrated, enjoying choosing entrees only to find that it cost the same as their previous order and was not providing different numbers for the waiter to calculate.  I felt that their attention spans were waning and that without an adjustment, they would lose focus and interest, and may even stop participating in the activity.  I didn’t want this to happen, so I changed the activity to require each student to order only once, calculate the tax individually and then compare as a group to see if their answers coincided.  Then they were to divide the tab among the number of students in the group individually and again compare as a group to ensure proper calculations. 

                This change in the activity seemed to meet the desired goal of the activity.  The goal was the engage the students in using these operations with decimal numbers in a real-life situation.  By the end of the adjusted activity, each student has added the total price, found the tax, and divided the tab among the students in their group.  Many of the groups even took it a step further on their own, calculating the cost if they were to each pay only for their own meal and not divide evenly among the group members.  Some groups found this very entertaining, comparing these two numbers and discussing who in the group had “extravagant” tastes and drove up the cost of their bill.

                In the end, I believe that this activity was a great success.  With the proper adjustments, each student was engaged and left the classroom with a feeling of confidence in their ability to multiply and divide decimal numbers.  They also left with a very real understanding of the importance of having these skills in the outside world when these types of calculations can come up and be a real asset in their own lives.