Week 6 Bode

Earlier this week my students were starting unit 2.2 in the Everyday Math program, which covers the uses of numbers in real life like telephone numbers. I brought in a sample of student work from this lesson where students wrote out their full name, age, how many candles were on their birthday cake, their home phone number, and emergency, school, and library phone number. This blog post has a lot to do with my noticing blog I posted earlier this week. The student’s work that I picked is one that is a low-level ability student and I’ve seen her work in previous lessons so I know she is improving but at a slower rate than others in the classroom. In the piece I collected she wrote her name correctly, she did not fill out her middle name because she was unsure what it was. When the question asked her age she wrote a 6 but it is a bit difficult to read. You can tell she is still working on her number writing, which they practice in Everyday Math. When the question asked how many candles were on her last birthday cake, she drew 5 candles. I believe her thinking was that the question was asking how many were on her birthday cake the year before her 6^th birthday. She could not remember her home phone number and was unsure what that even was which surprised me a little. She copied down the numbers on the board for the emergency, school, and library number but it’s interesting because most of her numbers are either backwards or very illegible. On the next piece of work she wrote her 7’s and 8’s which were very tiny, compared to how they are supposed to write on the whole line and you can see the struggle with direction when writing in the lines and squiggles on the paper. I think it is also important to mention that I sat with her to help her complete the entire worksheet because she could not remember the directions my teacher told her and she would’ve sat at her desk dong nothing. She needs to be directed when working individually.

This student needs to be advanced but not too harshly because otherwise she loses confidence in her work and needs to be constantly directed which isn’t good for trying to get students to work individually. This student needs help with her confidence and building up her mathematical thinking because she tends to get really shy and feel she can’t complete the work. I would suggest that giving her extra help like sending home math activities or something extra for her to complete will get her to be thinking about math more. Activities like looking for numbers in everyday situations outside the classroom so she gets used to seeing numbers and there actually is a connection to them. I would also try to stop sitting next to her every time we give an individual assignment or worksheet to complete. Instead I would try to observe what she’s doing from a far and maybe have a student work with her whom I know will guide her rather than just give her the answers (there’s some in the classroom who I know would be good at this). By encouraging students to help her I feel she may gain a better confidence because I think a teacher figure intimidates her. These two suggestions hopefully will advance her thinking and be two different ways to help her gain confidence in her mathematic abilities.