Adjustment of Instructional Activity

During the lesson on rounding, the majority of students had a lot of trouble grasping this skill. After the first day of instruction (which ended with students having some guided practice), it was evident to me that students would benefit from review of place value and reteaching of rounding. Although some students understood the general concept of rounding, many still neglected to apply prior knowledge of place value.

For example, when given a number to round to the nearest hundred, over half the class continued to round the number to the nearest ten. Some students made this simple mistake because they did not read the instructions carefully. They saw the word “round” and automatically assumed they should round to the nearest ten. About three students made this mistake, however, because they had not yet mastered place value, and therefore could not correctly identify the number in the place they needed to round.

During independent practice, I utilized this time to work intensively with these three students to review and practice place value again. Rather than forcing the entire class to review place value, which would have likely caused many students to become bored (and lead to misbehaving). This way, students who had mastered place value and were beginning to apply this knowledge to rounding could continue on with additional independent practice while I worked on reviewing place value with those who had not yet mastered it. This added an additional day to my instructional plan, however, by the end of my two-week unit, it proved to be beneficial to students.