Direct Instruction: A Trip to the Bank

On Tuesday April 2nd, four of my peers and I taught a Direct Instruction lesson to a second grade class at BDMS. The topic of our lesson was "A Trip to the Bank". Our lesson focused on bank terminology and definitions. We taught the following academic vocabulary: deposit, withdrawal, saving, spending, loan, taxes and interest.
We began the lesson by activating the students' prior knowledge. We did this by asking them questions about ideas they learned in the 6 previous lessons taught by our peers. We then assessed students' prior knowledge by asking them questions like "has anyone ever been inside a bank?", "what is a bank like inside?", "does anyone know why people go to the bank?", and "does anyone save money in a piggy bank?". We felt that these questions would not only assess prior knowledge, but also engage the students in the lesson.
To engage the students in the lesson, we explained that Spongebob and Patrick were going to join us on our trip to the bank. The students enjoyed this and were excited by it. While teaching the terms, we took "Brain Breaks" to check for understanding before moving on.
During the development of the lesson, students were taking notes on a fill in the blank sheet that matched the powerpoint notes. We walked around the classroom to make sure that the students were on task and copying notes correctly.
Our guided practice activity involved students coming up to the smart board, matching terms to pictures, and explaining why they made that match. This part of our lesson could have been improved. We could have selected different pictures or described scenarios instead.
Our second guided practice involved explaining scenarios that Spongebob was in and asking the class if spongebob should save money, spend money, or take out a loan. This part also could have been improved because each scenario was somewhat vague. We conducted a final check for understanding, and then we moved on to independent practice.
Our independent practice asked students to "fill in the blanks" on a worksheet. One student identified as having an IEP was given a different independent practice sheet. Her independent practice sheet had pictures instead of terms.

We finished our lesson on time. Everything went exactly as planned. Overall, my peers and I are proud of our lesson. After hearing professional feedback from our peers and Dr. Smirnova, we definitely realized some areas in which the lesson could have been improved.