Education Standards

I started researching the New York State mathematics education standards to see what the students I will be working with are expected to know according to the state. I had been frustrated in the past with some of the students because they were having a hard time understanding some of the topics we were trying to teach.

I found that they aren't expected to know some of the things we were trying to teach them until sixth or seventh grade. This made me feel better, knowing that the students weren't necessarily supposed to have prior knowledge of the material.

This might make me change my plans as far as which Design Tools I decide to use at the Boys and Girls Club, or the age group of the kids I work with.

Lesson Plan

I have created a lesson plan for the summer program at the Troy Boys and Girls Club. There will be groups of ten students, and each group will participate in a two-hour session every Tuesday and Thursday.

Based on my previous work at the Ark Community Charter School, I have scheduled one Design Tool segment to be completed every three sessions, for a total of six hours of work with each group. Depending on the amount of interest, we may have more than one group each day.

I am hoping we have 20 to 30 kids interested, so there will be two or three separate groups each day. The more kids involved, the more data is able to be collected.

First Steps

I am planning on doing a summer program with the Boys and Girls Club in Troy from the beginning of July to the end of August. Right now I am working on a tentative lesson plan. Then I am going to take a close look at all of the Design Tools and determine what the best progression of the Tools would be to teach the students.

After I do this, I will populate my lesson plan with specific Tools to be used throughout the program. This basic lesson plan will hopefully be able to be used in the future by anyone looking to design a teaching strategy using the Design Tools.