Personal Narrative-Homework Union

The pre-assessment used to establish students’ baseline knowledge and skills for this lesson is first to watch the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z2gpbYiEXo. After the video engages the students to bring back prior knowledge, they will be given a white board. The students will work out a subtraction problem on the board for me to see what they already understand about solving subtraction word problems. I will use the data to know what parts of the instruction on how to solve subtraction word problems need to be more emphasized to the students.

Write 912 ÷ 4 on the board. “We learned about this yesterday. How would we solve this? What do we do with the extra number in the quotient? What is that number called?”

This week I was observed during a particularly challenging math lesson. My lesson was elapsed time. My hope was to successfully try Sherry Parish’s, Number Talks method that Sabine Smead at Boulder County School for Integrated Studies, had introduced and modeled for us the week before at Friday Seminar.

providing opportunities to develop facility with finger-pattern counting, so that 5 fingers and 10 fingers become anchors for the other numbers. Thus, students will recognize that they do not have to recount the 5 fingers on one hand in order to show 6 fingers; instead, they can automatically show the 5 fingers, say “five”, and then count on an additional finger from the other hand to make 6 (A Guide to effective instruction in mathematics, kindergarten to grade 3 : number sense and numeration, 2003).

The moment it dinged, she collected both of the pieces and shoved them into her mouth as fast as she could possibly manage. She snatched her bag and ran out of the house, yelling a goodbye to her parents. She sprinted as far as her legs could carry her until finally, she slowed down to rest. Breathing heavily, she was reminded of when she’d woke that morning. That dream… That boy… I’ve never seen him before. Or that place, even. She was pondering the matter when suddenly, she was seized from behind. Yelping with surprised she turned her head to look at her attacker. Familiar blue eyes met hers and she immediately

If he would have started with it right away, he would have shut down and not want to complete any math. This artifact helped him work on his multiplication fluency, borrowing from the 10’s place, more or less, and word problems. When this student first started working on word problems, he used a note card that had the steps to reading, setting up, and answering word problems. He also used notecard with different words that mean addition and subtraction. When he completed this work, he no longer needed the note cards. He was able to read the problem, set it up, determine if it was addition or subtraction, and solve it all

Students will use tablets and/or computers to complete Ten Mark task and to play Falling Numbers computer game (http://www.counton.org/games/map-fractions/falling/ ). Each student was assigned task inTen Marks according to their individual needs and then played the Falling Numbers game, which focuses on multiplying fractions and whole numbers.

The teacher prepared a lesson to do an assessment to the children about addition. This lesson was to show on the smart board different numbers with dots for counting. All children had the opportunity to participate in this activity, in which the teacher was able to observe and document what they know and what are some of their needs to help them. The teacher asked the children question such as Do you know which number represents these points? Can you represent it in the form of an addition? The child represented and wrote the addition 0 + 2 = 2.

Easton worked towards his mathematics goal of counting up to 5 while in the classroom. Easton’s interest in books allowed him to feel comfortable to count the chicks on the page. This observation was important because it showed that Easton can count up seven with some teacher assistance. Continued counting with Easton

The article “Order and Value: Transitioning to Integers” from the journal Teaching Children Mathematics, by Laura Bofferding, proposes a new approach to learning integers. She strongly believes that values and order of numbers are the building blocks to learning how to add, subtract, and reason about quantities. Acknowledging that adding and subtracting can whole numbers can happen without the use of negatives, Bofferding still finds it necessary students develop skills with negative numbers during there lessons of adding and subtraction. It is her opinion that students should learn negative integers in first grade because delaying instruction will have teachers believing it is okay to say, “you cannot subtract a larger number from a smaller number” (Bofferding, 2014). For her, having students learn this is detrimental to their understanding of multi-digit subtraction problems such as 23-9. Furthermore, she disagrees with the Common Core Standards having them be discussed in sixth grade. She finds it more difficult that students have to rebuild their understanding about how number symbols, values, and orders, instead of learning negative integers younger.

To begin, my mentor began with an activity called Ten and Tuck. Each student sat on the carpets in the front of the classroom as she explained the activity. Each student began by holding up 10 fingers and would tuck fingers away determined by what number my teacher said. Then, they would say the number sentence aloud every way possible. From this activity that measured a previously

[In clip 2 at 0:57 the student explains how she knows that -24 is less than -12. She explains this by saying, “because -24 is farther away from 0 than -12 is.” I responded to her by saying, “Positive 24 is further away from 0 than positive 12 and positive 24 is greater than positive 12. So, how… what’s our difference there?” One student in the group said, “because you’re dealing with negatives and then positives.” The other student in the group said, “Negatives… um… is counting down and for positives it’s counting up.” Through this conversation and their explanations, the two students could deepen and solidify their conceptual understanding. I was able to get the students to connect positive and negative integers and see how they relate and

Celestial walked to the edge of the snowy garden and clenched her fists tighter. Suddenly, her hand went flying onto the tall tree bark, creating a dent and splintering the wood. Blood dripped constantly from her knuckles as she dropped to her knees with a wavering sigh to her voice. She cried loudly.

The final test was Mathematical Reason, which consisted of an addition and subtraction portion. An individual one to three-digit number was presented, and from here the participant’s objective was to either add or subtract, depending on their respective portions, by sevens from the given number. Points were given based on a process to value ratio. For instance, if the participant correctly said each number in the sequence correctly up until the eighth number in the sequence, but continued to correctly add or subject in terms of sevens, then points will be given based on the process by lower points will be given due to the incorrect values in that sequence. Some limitations the participant was given include a five second period to ‘think’ and comprehend the number presented, and then a forty-five second period to say as many correct numbers in the sequence as they can.

Class started by referring back to what was taught previously. The teacher went through some simple summation questions (e.g. 2+2+2+3) with the student, recapping the method of addition - “Doubles”, “Near Doubles” (i.e. 2+2=4 and 2+3=2+2+1 and 4+5 is a “Near Doubles” pair again).