The Considerations I Would Share with Mrs. Summer

 

The Considerations I Would Share with Mrs. Summer

Author: Santosh Kumar Biswa, Sr. Teacher, Damphu CS, Tsirang, Bhutan

 

Condition

Your friend and teacher co-worker, Mrs. Summer is planning a unit for her economics class. She wants to plan an engaging lesson that will explore the concepts of supply and demand. She knows she wants to take advantage of either an inquiry-, project-, or problem-based instructional activity but is not quite sure what would work best.

Inquiry-, project-, or problem-based instructional activities are some successful tools that enable a teacher to have decentralized learning in the classroom with incredible outcomes. An inquiry-based instructional activity usually begins with some essential questions with the main focus on the discovery. In contrast, a problem-based instructional activity engages students in solving a real-world problem, which demands students apply their knowledge and skills to form the solution. On the other hand, project-based instructional activities are long-term activities that engage students in creating any form of visual material with any possible answer. All of them are student-centered teaching strategies that demand critical thinking for active learning. Identifying appropriate instructional activities is often challenging and crucial while designing the instructional process (Brown and Green, 2016). A teacher should be wise enough to select a strategy appropriately based on the nature of the content that is going to be taught in the classroom. Based on the scenario presented, as a friend and co-worker of Mrs. Summer, to help her plan a unit for her economics class to teach the concept of supply and demand and make her lesson an engaging lesson, I would suggest she opt for a problem-based instructional activity as its main emphasis is on the acquisition of knowledge and not on the end product. Students will be engaged actively with the use of their own experiences to create a visual demand and supply curve based on their findings. Moreover, this activity would help students understand the relationship between the amount of a product that is being produced and how much people are willing to buy by studying real-world problems.

 

The considerations I would share with her regarding teaching the concept of supply and demand using problem-based instructional activities are about her understanding of the subject content deeply and seeing how she could make students connect the content to everyday life (UNI, 2022). Moreover, she should answer three questions by Brown and Green (2016, pp. 132–134) before proceeding with the planning for the lesson as below:

 

·       Will my learning environment be open-ended or directed?

·       Will my learning environment be oriented toward the learner, knowledge, assessment, community, or some combination of these four?

·       What will the students do during the instruction that will help them learn the content?

 

Understanding and examining certain factors is necessary for all teachers before designing any activity. To achieve the expected result, she should address the following factors:

 

·       Setting clear instructional goals and objectives is essential for the activity she is designing so that the focus of the lesson is not diverted.

·       Anticipating some of the potential challenges while having problem-based instructional activities she may face or encounter while presenting or carrying out the activities and how she should address them is essential. Effective learning takes place in the classroom if the planning is good along with the classroom management.

·       Making the lesson relevant by having a clear link between the lesson objective and the assessment is essential.

 

Before Mrs. Summer proceeds with the teaching of supply and demand during the economics lesson, the first thing she would be advised to do is to select an appropriate open-ended question that she should be presenting to her students. Then, I would ask her to plan how her students should analyze the question presented to them through investigation, decision-making, and problem-solving. The question should be based on real-world issues related to supply and demand. I would advise her to plan on engaging her students in exploring information in their local marketplace and allowing them to organize the information to connect them with real-world issues (Learningbyinquiry.org, n.d.). In doing so, she should be engaging them to generate hypotheses that explain the phenomena. She would also be asked to design follow-up questions so that her students could identify them further. She should also leave some time for her students to seek additional data so that they can answer the question she has presented. Finally, she should be engaging students to develop the solutions to the questions presented to them, followed by a proper assessment process that checks students’ engagement, making connections, and future thinking.

 

Regarding technology inclusion, she should be considering the use of a computer to develop the PowerPoint presentation and conduct data analysis for the final presentation in the classroom based on their findings. They can also be advised to use other relevant software to design graphic presentations on the supply and demand curves.

 

References

Brown, A. H. & Green, T. D. (2016). The essentials of instructional design: Connecting fundamental principles with process and practice. Routledge. https://ikhsanaira.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/the-essential-of-instructional-design.pdf

Learningbyinquiry.org. (n.d.). What the Heck is the Difference Between IBL and PBL? https://www.learningbyinquiry.com/what-the-heck-is-the-difference-between-ibl-and-pbl/

UNI. (2022). Teacher’s In-Depth Content Knowledge. https://intime.uni.edu/teachers-depth-content-knowledge