Donna Perry May 19, 2009

EDST 6306/Instructional Design

Audience Description for Unit on Inventors & Inventions

General Characteristics

This 3rd grade class consists of 16 students in the class with a 50/50 split of male

and female. This is a small class size even for the Warren Township district. It is a

general education class at Mt. Horeb School in Warren, NJ. There are 4 students who

have IEPs. Two have classifications for a learning disability (LD), one for Other Health

Impaired (ADHD) and the fourth student for Autism (Aspergers Syndrome). One student

is an ESL student and receives additional services for language. The two students with

learning disabilities leave the classroom for the majority of the day and go to a resource

room for Language Arts, Reading and Math.

There are ten Caucasian (62.5%), one African-American (6.3%), and five Asian-

American (31.2%). This is slightly off from the ethnicity composition of the town, with

Caucasians at over 83.6%, African-American (1.2%) and Asian-Americans at (10.7%).

The small size of the class may be skewing the results.

Ethnicity Class School* New Jersey*
White 62.5% 79% 56%

Asian 31.2% 19% 8%

Hispanic 0.0% 1% 19%

African American 6.3% <1% 17%

*Figures are from Great Schools website. http://www.greatschools.net/new-jersey/warren/Warren-

Township-School-District/schools/

** US Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/012528.html

Warren Township is an upper class neighborhood with families who are generally

wealthy and well educated. The median income for the town is $103,825 which is about

twice as high as the U.S. median income $50,233 (U.S. Census Bureau)**

Parental involvement in this class is indicative of the town. Most of the parents

are very involved and are generally in touch with the teacher as needed. Third grade is a

grade where parents are usually still closely connected to the school.

Many of the parents in the town have one parent working and one at home. The

majority of this class has both parents working.

Learning Styles:
 I used a learning inventory questionnaire called “Learning Styles Inventory 3-5”.

It was a simple five question (see 1-5) questionnaire that I had the students fill out

themselves. I did read all the questions and response options to the class. The second

page of the questionnaire had a chart where the student colored in the categories based on

the answers they gave. For example, if they had answered three questions with the letter

“A”, they would color up to three boxes under “A Speaking”. Their responses created a

“bar chart”. Interestingly, the same day that they filled out this chart, they had had a

Math lesson on making “bar charts” so it was very easy for all of them to understand how

to do it. The students could immediately see what type of learner that they were.

However, I did find that one student was either disinterested or had difficulty

understanding it because I noticed that they quickly answered every question with a “B”.

Also, I felt that this questionnaire had too many options for responses (A-F = 6 options)

and it may have overwhelmed or confused the student in picking out the best answer.

Regardless, I input and then compiled on the following chart all the answers exactly as

they had filled in.

Learning Styles Continued

5 3 2 3 4 4 0
4 1 6 3 0 1 5
3 1 1 4 3 2 5
2 4 3 1 3 1 4
1 2 9 1 1 1 2
A B C D E F
Speaking Visualizing Reading Writing Listening Manipulating

T 11 21 12 11 9 16
% 13.8% 26.3% 15% 13.8% 11.3% 20.0%

This chart indicates that the majority of the class learns mostly via “Visualizing” (26.3%)

and then “Manipulation” (20%). According to the written description on the inventory, if

the student checked off “B” (Visualizing) too many of their questions, it indicated that

they learn best when they have picture in their mind. If they checked off many “F”

(Manipulating) options, then they learn best by manipulating objects and moving things

around. We can see by the response chart that “Listening” (choice F) was one method

that the students learned the least by. This may indicate that “direct instruction” is not the

best method of teaching for these students.

 My 23 students are in an honors level 9th grade English class, which is a survey of

various genres of literature. This class takes place at Millburn High School, one of the

top three high schools in New Jersey. My students are mostly Caucasian, though my

class also includes one African-American student, one student of Middle Eastern descent,

and two Indian-American students. This is relatively indicative of the racial composition

of the town, with 88.9% of the population identified as white, followed by Asian at 8.4%.

While students in my school generally appear to get along across racial lines, we recently

had a racially motivated fight that resulted in the student body taking sides, and in some

cases, taking part in acts of prejudice.

Their families are generally wealthy and well-educated. The median family

income in Millburn/Short Hills is $158,888 (Township of Millburn), nearly half of the

New Jersey median family income, which is $77,875 (U.S. Census Bureau). Some of

their parents work long hours in the city and are absent from the home for extended

periods. Others have a stay-at-home parent who is typically highly involved in the child’s

education. Parents in this school tend to frequently contact teachers regarding their

children’s progress, however, they often hesitate to become directly involved in students’

work. Instead, students, even those who are high-achieving, typically have tutors in

several subjects.

I have no students with IEPs in this class, though one student does have a 504

which requires preferential seating and class notes. However, I would suggest that a
teacher with special education students make some modifications to the units, such as

creating teacher check-in points for the final WebQuest project, and extended time to

complete the project and any other independent work.

Entry Competencies

Some of my students may have independently read The Kite Runner prior to our

exploration of the text, and based on my experience teaching this novel last year, many

will have had difficulty completely understanding the text.

In beginning this unit, I am assuming my students know very little about Afghani

culture, though they are unfortunately likely to associate the country, its people and Islam

with Al Qaeda and 9/11. My students are unlikely to know about Afghanistan during its

pre-Taliban era, nor are they likely to know the extent to which the Taliban has terrorized

the Afghani people. However, given that this unit will take place in Spring, my students

will have reached a level of comfort with one another and me that will allow them to

openly discuss some of these preconceived notions and areas of confusion about

Afghanistan. I also assume that students largely trust the media, and we will embark on

media analysis to call this trust into question.

Despite students’ naïveté regarding Afghani life, certain themes in The Kite

Runner will be familiar to them because we have studied these themes in novels we

previously read together. For example, while reading Night, we considered father-son

relationships and the idea of turning others into scapegoats. However, students’

understandings of these themes will evolve as they read The Kite Runner.

In terms of technology, students will use a Wikispace for the first time in our

class. I would assume that most have not used Wikispace for other classes either,
therefore I will expect students to face a learning curve, which may cause some

resistance. Unlike Wikispace, PowerPoint is quite familiar to students, and they are used

to their teachers using their program, though most dislike PowerPoints, as they

automatically assume they will be boring and text-filled.

Learning Styles:

Challenges to my students’ motivation are whether or not they are reading the

book The Kite Runner and whether or not I can help them feel personally connected to a

people and country that they may currently regard with some level of discomfort or fear.

Their final project, a newscast, will allow students to use a variety of learning

styles ranging from aural (through speaking and choosing sounds and music to go with

newscast) to social (interviewing people and working cooperatively) to visual

(determining images to accompany information in newscast), just to name a few. I will

further motivate my students by inviting a real news producer from NY1 News to

evaluate the newscasts. Furthermore, we will preface the project by discussing how

applicable the skills that go into newscasting are to other professions.