Modified Task 4 Assignment

Spring 2018 - MAED 3224

Section A: Context for Learning

1. Grade level: F
​ ourth Grade

2. How much time is devoted each day to mathematics instruction in your classroom?

Students in this classroom receive mathematics instruction for approximately two hours each

day.

3. Identify any textbook or instructional program the teacher uses for mathematics

instruction. If a textbook, please provide the title, publisher, and date of publication. T
​ he

instructional program and textbook used within this classroom was​ e

​ nVision math 2.0

(Volume 2) from Pearson (2015.)

4. From your observations, list other resources (e.g., electronic whiteboard, manipulatives,

online resources) the teacher uses for mathematics instruction in this class. Provide one

example of how a resource was used to teach a concept. S

​ martBoard, play money, math

notebooks, whiteboard, chromebooks, Google Forms, Google Classroom. The inclusion of

these materials into instructional times with in the classroom helped to improve the delivery

of content by allowing students to really participate in the lesson in a more hands-on, visual

way. For example, having play money as a manipulative for students to use as they practiced

word problems involving money really helped students to visually see what was happening

and sort of “act out” the problem.

5. From your observations, explain how your teacher makes sure the students learn the

standard/objectives conceptually giving a specific example. F

​ rom my observations, these
student’s classroom teacher did a very good job checking for understanding. Throughout

lessons, this fourth grade teacher would ask clarifying questions, have students justify their

responses to math questions, and write out strategies and examples in their math notebooks

before taking quick checks on the chromebooks. The teacher would walk around and check

for understanding as well as hopping right online to watch the students scores come in as

they took their quick checks so that he could re-engage/explain if needed and have students

come up and show him the strategies that they drew out in their math notebooks. In addition,

the teacher had students “prove” their answers, which I thought was a great idea.

6. What did you learn most about teaching mathematics from observing this teacher? I​

really enjoyed watching this teacher provide instruction in mathematics. I thought that this

teacher did an excellent job explaining math concepts, providing real-world examples, and

also forcing students to really think and understand what they were doing by having them

justify/”prove” their answers, orally in discussion or written in their math notebooks during

independent practice and quick checks or tests. I loved the way that the teacher had students

reflect on the answers that they provided and immediately share with the class how they got

their solutions. The teacher created a safe and comfortable classroom environment where it

was okay and actually recognized as positive to take risks in math. Students were very

comfortable immediately sharing their answers and how they got to them with the whole

class, even on the board. When a student was incorrect, the teacher would facilitate a

discussion and have the students work out the problem again in a different way. The teacher

was very positive and encouraging throughout math, and I loved that students felt that they

could share, even if they were incorrect. I learned a lot from this teacher about how to
facilitate this sort of math discussion during instructional periods, as well as how to have

students justify and prove their answers in written work and class discussion.

Section B: Whole Class Lesson

1. Describe the Central Focus of your lesson: ​ Students will learn and practice using fractions

and decimals to work with money.

2. State the CCSSM Standard and the objective for your whole class lesson. 4
​ .MD.A.2 - Use

the four operations to solve word problems involving distances, intervals of time, liquid

volumes, masses of objects, and money, including problems involving simple fractions or

decimals, and problems that require expressing measurements given in a larger unit in terms

of a smaller unit. Represent measurement quantities using diagrams such as number line

diagrams that feature a measurement scale.

3. Instructional Strategies and Learning Tasks: (summarize the lesson plan components by

briefly describing the instruction and the learning tasks you used. Include the tasks students

will solve during the lesson.) S

​ tudents will solve a variety of different math problems involving

real world examples through story problems involving money, decimals, and fractions. For

example, students were asked the following question during the lesson’s “explore” activity:

“Ms. S buys a book on sale for $3.12. Ms. S gives the cashier a $5 to purchase the book. How
much change should Ms. S receive?”

Students will worked independently as well as in groups to solve word problems, such as the

word problem above.

 In addition, students will participate in class discussions (facilitated by the teacher) of the

questions provided as well as justify their mathematical thinking and prove their answers.

4. Create a formative assessment that assesses conceptual knowledge, procedural fluency,

and problem solving. I​ nsert a copy of the assessment with your solutions here.

To evaluate student understanding and progress, students will complete an exit ticket with the following
questions:

1. $2.01 x 2 = _____
2. $62.46 + $22.08 = ______
3. $18.04 - $7.05 = _____
4. $14.75 + $2.50 + $5.25 = _____

Solutions:
1. $2.01 x 2 = $​ 4.02
2. $62.46 + $22.08 = $​ 84.54
3. $18.04 - $7.50 = $​ 10.99
4. $14.75 + $2.50 + $5.25 = $​ 22.50

5. Define your evaluation criteria for mastery of the assessment in a rubric. Make sure you

define separately conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and problem solving parts of

this rubric, including the corresponding points.

Students will be expected to achieve 75% or higher (at least 6/8 points) on their exit tickets in

order to have met the lesson objectives and expectations. Each of the four exit ticket

questions will be worth 2 points for a total of 8 possible points. 1 points for conceptual

understanding, 3 points for problem solving, and 4 points for procedural fluency.

Section C: Results of Whole Class Assessment

1. Create a graphic showing class performance of conceptual understanding, procedural

fluency, and problem solving of the objective. This can be pie charts, tables, bar graph etc. but

must show performance in each of the above areas separately, according to each student’s

performance in the formative assessment.

Student Conceptual Procedural Problem Solving Total

(1 points) (4 points) (3 points) (8 points)

Student A 1/1 3/4 2/3 6/8

Student B 1/1 4/4 3/3 8/8

Student C 1/1 3/4 2/3 6/8

Student D 1/1 4/4 3/3 8/8

2. Describe common error patterns in each of the areas of patterns of learning - conceptual

understanding, and procedural fluency. Refer to the graphic to support your discussion. (​ 3

separate paragraphs, one per each pattern of learning)

Conceptual Understanding - ​Unfortunately, while the students demonstrated understanding

of the lesson’s content, their understanding is not demonstrated by any illustration, such as

drawing. In order to demonstrate understanding of this lesson’s content by an illustration,

such as a drawing, students might have shown something like a number line, a base ten chart,

or drawing representations of the money being added and/or subtracted. Due to

technological issues, the exit ticket had to be changed on the spot, and I regret that I did not

instruct students to use different strategies and/or draw pictures to illustrate their

understanding. Since there is not pictorial evidence, the student’s writing and solving of the

algorithm will demonstrate conceptual understanding. Each of the four students analyzed
demonstrated satisfactory levels of conceptual understanding through their standard

algorithm formation. Each student accurately set up their problem using the standard

algorithm without hesitation.

Procedural Fluency - O
​ ut of the four students analyzed, 2 out of the 4 students demonstrated

100% procedural fluency, having accurately written out a number sentence (using standard

algorithm) and receiving the correct answer. The remaining two students received 3 out of 4

points for procedural fluency, because they correctly set up and solved p
​ art ​of the problem or

some o
​ f the problems, but not all. Students A and C both received a wrong answer on one of

the exit ticket’s four problems. Both Student A and Student C made errors related to “carrying”

in their problems which caused them to receive the wrong answer.

Problem Solving - ​Out of the four students analyzed, half of the students demonstrated 100%

problem solving, having correctly written out and solved their standard algorithm, one of these

two even indicating their correct answers by circling. The remaining two students

demonstrated partial problem solving by correctly writing out their standard algorithm for

each problem, but each failing to correctly solve one of the four problems correctly. Errors

made by these two remaining students were related to “carrying” in their problems, which

resulted in the students each receiving one wrong answer on their exit ticket.

3. Scan and insert here the copies of​ 2 students​ first work samples as follows. Choose the

most representative examples from the whole class assessment (​no student names​). Then,

analyze each student’s misconceptions.

Student 1 Mathematics Work Sample

Student A

Student 2 Mathematics Work Sample

Student C
 Both Student A and Student C made similar errors in problem solving that caused

them to receive incorrect answers for one of the four problems on each of their individual exit

tickets.

Student A, struggled with procedural fluency, demonstrating a mistake in computation.

Rather than exchanging from the correct number (8,) Student A gave a number 10 tens from

nowhere and then transferred those to the 4 to make 14. Student A does not understand

entirely what the act of “carrying” accomplishes and thus wasn’t able to see his/her mistake.

Student C made a very similar error to Student A. Rather than adding 5 + 0 + 5 to equal

10 and exchanging to carry the one to the next column, the student just wrote the answer to

be 5, which is false.

Section D: Plan for Re-Engagement

Assessment results are irrelevant if you do not act on them. Thus, you are to create a plan to

use the results you described in Part C. You do not have to actually re-engage the students but

you must show that you understand what to do with these results. Thus, based on the

assessment results you described above, group each of your students into one of these

groups:

Group 1 - re-engage for conceptual

Group 2 - re-engage for procedural

Group 3 - re-engage for problem solving

Group 4 - mastery/ready to move on

1. Describe the number of students you will have in each of these groups. (Note: if a child

performed poorly in multiple parts of the assessment, that child will start in the conceptual

group) S
​ tudents A and C need more work on problem solving and would be placed in group 3.

Students B and D would be placed into group 4 as they have demonstrated satisfactory levels

of conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and problem solving.

2. Plan to re-engage for conceptual understanding.

a. Describe your re-engagement lesson for this group (objective from CCSSM,

learning tasks, strategies, materials, assessment).

CCSS: 4.MD.A.2 - Use the four operations to solve word problems involving distances,

intervals of time, liquid volumes, masses of objects, and money, including problems involving

simple fractions or decimals, and problems that require expressing measurements given in a

larger unit in terms of a smaller unit. Represent measurement quantities using diagrams such

as number line diagrams that feature a measurement scale.

Learning tasks and strategies: I would use the CCSS above again for this

re-engagement lesson, since drawings unfortunately were not emphasized in this original

lesson. Students would solve similar problems as previously presented, such as story

problems involving money, addition, subtraction, and multiplication, all of decimals, but this

time would illustrate their thinking and demonstrate conceptual understanding through

pictorial representation, as well as through their standard algorithm or whichever strategy they

decide to use. While students would be allowed to represent their thinking in whichever

means or using whatever strategy made sense to them and demonstrated satisfactory

mathematical thinking, the following strategies and pictorial representations would be

encouraged options: number lines and base ten charts. Teacher will discuss strategies, such
as using number lines, with the students in order to show them ways that we can use

strategies to help us solve problems.

Manipulatives: Students will also be offered manipulatives to use, such as play money,

to help them to visualize the problems and solve.

b. Explain why you believe this re-engagement lesson will be effective based on the

error patterns you found in the data. Score here will be based on how well you describe

the connection to the re-engagement lesson and the error patterns found, effective use

of materials, and sound methodology. T

​ his lesson will be effective in teaching

students conceptual understanding through giving them the opportunity to use

different strategies, procedural fluency, and demonstrate their understanding

pictorially, which demonstrates conceptual understanding. In the original lesson,

students were not asked specifically to demonstrate their conceptual understanding

through drawing pictures of strategies. This re-engagement lesson will allow students

to learn more about strategies they can use and will give them an opportunity to apply

their knowledge by being presented with new problems and new strategies that they

can represent pictorially to demonstrate conceptual understanding.

c. Explain how you will reassess for mastery of the concept.

Assessment: Students will be presented with a story problem exit ticket involving

money and addition and subtraction. Students will be given manipulatives and asked to draw

out their thinking and problem solving using something like a number line to demonstrate

conceptual understanding. The exit ticket will be graded out of 10 points: 3 points for

conceptual understanding, 4 points for procedural fluency, and 3 points for problem solving.
Choose to do either 3a OR 3b:

3b. Plan to Re-engage for problem solving.

a. Describe your re-engagement lesson for this group (objective from CCSSM,

learning tasks, strategies, materials, assessment). (​ one paragraph)

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.4.NBT.B.4

Fluently add and subtract multi-digit whole numbers using the standard algorithm.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.4.NBT.A.2

Read and write multi-digit whole numbers using base-ten numerals, number names,

and expanded form. Compare two multi-digit numbers based on meanings of the

digits in each place, using >, =, and < symbols to record the results of comparisons.

I would use both of the standards above in this re-engagement lesson on

problem solving in order to address the students’ mistakes in their standard algorithm

solving which involved issues with “carrying.”

Students will be presented with addition and subtraction problems involving

multi-digit whole numbers and standard algorithm. Students will be asked to use

standard algorithm and one other strategy, such as base ten charts or expanded form,

to solve the problems presented.

As manipulatives, students will be given units, rods, and flats to help them solve

the problems at hand.

b. Explain why you believe this re-engagement lesson will be effective based on the

error patterns you found in the data. Score here will be based on how well you describe

the connection to the re-engagement lesson and the error patterns found, effective use
 of materials, and sound methodology. T
​ his lesson will be effective for re-engagement

because it targets standard algorithm and strategies, especially expanded form and

base, which will help students to see what the numbers they are borrowing from and

carrying to really mean. Students’ misconceptions and errors all related to carrying,

and it is likely because students do not understand what they are really doing when

they “carry.” This lesson will help students to learn and understand what each of these

numbers really means and what actually happens when you “carry.”

c. Explain how you will reassess for mastery of the concept.

Students will be presented with an exit ticket involving addition and subtraction of

money. Students will be instructed to use the standard algorithm in addition to using a

strategy such as “base ten” to solve for the problem’s answer. The exit ticket will be graded

out of 10 points: 3 points for conceptual understanding, 4 points for procedural fluency, and 3

points for problem solving.