Carmen Thong

EDUC 450
Dawn Mallette
John Knight
Setting and Context
The School Community
The Poudre School District (PSD) consists of approximately 29,053 students and contains one
early childhood centers, 31 elementary schools, 10 middle schools, seven high schools, one specialized
school and five charter schools. The school district consists of a student body of which 73.79 percent of
the student body identifies as white, 18.09 percent who identify as Hispanic/Latino, three percent
Asian, 1.16 percent Black/African American, 0.52 percent Native American, 3.41 percent who are two
or more races and 0.14 percent native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. The mission of PSD is to
educate every child every day. Their vision is to support and inspire every child to think, to learn, to
care and to graduate prepared to be successful in a changing world. In order to achieve their mission
and vision, PSD recently adopted the Board of Education's District Ends Policy in June 2014.
District Ends is a model of measurable standards that each child will be held to from early
childhood education until high school graduation. The first stage is the Foundations for Success to
which this first stage is imperative to ensure students have what they will need in order to obtain long
term success. The Poudre School District will measure and monitor individual student progress against
the following milestones. The PSD will ensure that students exhibit healthy behaviors of physical
fitness, nutrition, and mental health in a school environment. Students will be able to manage
transitional changes and demonstrate achievements of learning skills and knowledge within the
following academic areas: dance, drama and theater arts, comprehensive health and physical fitness,
English language proficiency, mathematics, music, reading, writing, communicating, science, social
studies, visual arts, world languages, career and technical education.

The next milestone in this policy is Success in a Changing World to which PSD students will
be prepared for college and workforce success. In order to measure this, the Poudre School District will
ensure that their students will exhibit the following skills: a work ethnic, global and cultural awareness,
personal responsibility, creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, information,
media, and technology literacy, communication, civic responsibility, collaboration, social and
emotional skills.
After these two milestones, the school district will try to challenge their students to go Above
and Beyond by having numerous opportunities to excel in their personal areas of interest as well as
opportunities to have authentic experiences within their field.
The academic program at Poudre High School is based on three core principles as well:
Relevancy, Rigor and Relationships. They have classes in art, business, English language acquisition,
family and consumer sciences, integrated services, language arts, mathematics, physical education,
science, social studies, technology education, and world languages. Poudre High School also have
many opportunities for their students to become involved with their high school in order to have a
positive experience. Some examples have been basketball, football, wrestling, cross country, soccer,
golf, tennis, softball, and volleyball. Some non-athletic activities for students to become involved with
are the future business leaders of America, yearbook, poetry club, drama club, knowledge bowl, and
many more.
Along with many extra-curricular clubs and activities for the students to become involved with,
PHS also has other programs to support their students. At Poudre High School, they have many
resources for students who may fall behind or are having trouble with their school work. Poudre High
School implements the AVID tutoring program and has a room called the Learning Lab where
students can make up their school work and can get tutoring assistance as well. Poudre High School
follows the district ends' policy of Above and Beyond by providing such programs such as Gifted
and Talented, Capstone, Advanced Placement, and other programs.

If parents wish to become involved in their students' school life, PHS provides numerous dates
such as parent teacher conferences, college/university information sessions and the Back to School
night to which parents can meet with their children's teachers and learn of the expectations that have
been set on their child. Parents can also keep up to date with upcoming events by reading the Parent
Newsletters which are available at the PHS school website.
Students and Classroom
The classroom I am currently observing for my EDUC 450 course is an Algebra II class
instructed by Marcy Lewis in room 216. The classroom is set up to look like a traditional classroom. A
smart board for lectures is placed in the front of the room while the desks are arranged in straight
columns. When the students are seated, to their right is another whiteboard to which any individual can
locate the objectives of today's lessons and what they can expect will happen during the period. The
classroom demographic consists of 33 students. Twenty one of the students are male and twelve are
female. There is a percentage of 58 amongst of the students who could identify as Caucasian, 36
percent who would identify under Hispanic/Latino, and 6 percent of the class who would identify under
Asian.
After spending a couple of weeks with these students, I have learned that none of them have an
individualized learning plan or special needs in regards to their education. However, Cheyanne will
occasionally need to leave the classroom in order to take her test. Saja does not come to class often and
therefore, needs assistance to catch up with her schoolwork. Nick, Brant, and Cheyanne do have a
slight tendency to get off topic and not pay attention to the lectures or go on other websites instead of
working. In regards to the students as a whole, a majority of the students can calculate the correct
answers but cannot express into words what they have just calculated or found. An example would be
that if a linear model was used to predict the revenue of the 11th month, y = 1100x+1600, some students
do not have a clear understanding that x is our independent variable and represents the number of
months while y is our dependent variable and represents the revenue.

During my time at Poudre High School, I have learned about some of their interests alongside
their educational needs as well. There is a handful of students who play sports. Nicholas is currently
playing for the football team, Nick is apart of wrestling and enjoys the cartoon Spongebob
Squarepants, and Cheyanne is part of the volleyball team. Tayler has been cheer-leading for five years
and has been cheer-leading on the competitive level as well. I believe Gabe swims competitively and
his swimming style is freestyle. Zander has played professionally in both soccer and tennis for his
school in Norway.
I have also learned that Zachary enjoys skateboarding on his weekends and hopes to join the
Navy seals after graduating from high school. Alma spends her weekends helping out at her family's
restaurant. Isabelle is currently a member of the Pre-Vet Club and her goal is to become admitted into
Colorado State University's veterinary sciences program.
Topic and Rationale
These are some of the students that I will be teaching to in the future. Unfortunately, my
cooperating teacher and I have not set a date for the lesson plan as of yet. However, I do know that
Marcy Lewis has taught the students about different types of functions and their properties, definitions,
forms, and their uses as well as inequalities. She has showed the class how to graph their data using an
excel spreadsheet and how to understand strong versus weak correlation between the linear model and
data given. I may presume that my lesson plan may cover teaching either quadratic or exponential
functions.
The reason why those types of functions would come next is in order to show the students that
when a linear model is insufficient such as predicting the world population size over the span of a few
decades, other types of modeling can be used. An instructional strategy that I would like to consider is
allowing the students to use their computers to graph various exponential functions and both observe,
record, analyze, and reflect on what is happening to the graphs. The reason why I decided to choose
this instructional strategy was in order for the students to make better sense of where each variable in

the function comes from and what does the variable model in the context of the problem.