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Taryn Geroche
Ms. Alyssa Barnes
EDUC 485B
Teacher Work Sample
13 May 2016

Instruction and Management Plan

The CBMS Theme Song Project unit was split into two parts. For the first half of the
unit, students completed one/two day long lessons about a few more in-depth statistics topics.
Again, students already knew the basics of how to calculate mean, median, etc., and how to
create each type of data display chart these lessons started to move into more information about
interpreting the data, not just doing the calculations.
For the second half of the unit, students completed a project. The driving question for the
project was, What rhythms and sounds create the music that middle school students like? In
order to answer this question, students worked either alone or in pairs to create a short song,
using the simple songwriting app called Figure on their iPads. When they had a draft of their
song created, students were to collect data about CBMS students opinions of their song, analyze
the data, and then use the conclusions from their analysis to revise their song in some way. The
purpose of the revisions was to come closer to reaching the class goal to Create a theme song
to be played at CBMS events which represents the musical taste of CBMS students. Students
were required to go through at least two rounds of data collection, analysis, and revision. Each
group created a group goal as well, which specified how they would know that they had met the
class goal (i.e. Our group goal is to have an average song rating of at least seven out of ten.) If
after two rounds of revisions a group had still not met their goal, they would need to go through
another round. At the end of the project, each group gave a presentation of their work, which

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included sharing about their data collection and analysis, as well as playing the final version of
their song for the class. Finally, students completed a written reflection to go over what their
project was about and what they had learned. To view the full text of the Directions, click the
link at the top of the page.
My goal with this project was to leave it very open-ended, so that the students could have
a lot of freedom and creativity in how they proceeded. Students would use all of their prior
knowledge, as well as the knowledge gained in the first half of the unit, to complete the project
to the best of their ability. Students had to come up with their own statistical questions and
representative samples, to do their own data analysis, including choosing which kinds of graphs
would be most appropriate, and to create their own goal and show that they had reached it.
Students could come up with their own method for surveying their peers: most chose to ask
others their questions in person, but some opted to use a Google Form. Some students even
decided not to use Figure, but to use another music-making app that they found. My favorite
part of this project was allowing students to work at their own pace, so that the responsibility for
completing the project was all on them.
Students not only had to use math to complete their project, but they demonstrated their
literacy skills as well. Students were asked to do all of the recording of their work in complete,
well-written sentences. The reflection was to be written in complete sentences as well, and they
had to make sure that their free writing contained the answers to all of the questions. Students
also demonstrated age-appropriate speaking skills, as they were to give a presentation in front of
the whole class, but they had an outline to help them know what to say. Some students spoke
extemporaneously from their outline, while others made PowerPoint presentations to serve as a
visual aid for their presentation.

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Students experienced many different types of instructional strategies throughout this unit.
Some of the lessons in the first half of the unit contained direct instruction, but more of the time
was spent with the students learning through exploration. The Carnegie Hall textbook that was
used for some of the lessons is very good at leading students through a topic, using good
scaffolding techniques, so that all that is really necessary is a recap by the teacher at the end of
the lesson. Students nearly always worked as partners during these explorative lessons, so there
was cooperative learning going on, as well. During the project, students were learning through
experience. I think there is no better way to solidify math in ones brain than to use it in a realworld situation, especially one that is authentic and relevant to you. Most students chose to work
with a partner during the project as well, and even those who worked alone had to check in with
their peers for their surveys and their checkpoints, so everyone was working cooperatively on the
project, too.
The project aspect of this unit was obviously a bit non-traditional, so we had to use a bit
of a non-traditional management plan, as well. Students were always up and about within the
classroom, talking and playing music. When they were doing surveys many students even
needed to leave the room to survey students from other classes. We trusted students with a lot of
responsibility, that even when they were working at their own pace and able to talk amongst
themselves, they would still get their project finished. In order to maintain order when everyone
was working at their own pace, we just had to establish very clear expectations at the start of the
project. As a class we discussed what it means to be respectful of others when critiquing or
being critiqued. We very clearly shared the directions for the project, so that students were fully
aware of what it was their responsibility to complete. We discussed how to appropriately and
respectfully approach another teachers classroom and ask to survey their students. We discussed
good teamwork and how to pick a good partner. And finally, we encouraged a high level of

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respect during presentations. When the academic and behavioral expectations were made clear,
students were successful at staying on task and respectfully completing their work.