Planning Commentary Kyle Thain October 26, 2012 Lesson Plan 1.

Content Focus and Standards: Summarize the central focus for the content you will teach in this learning segment. Describe the standards that relate to this content. The objectives for my math lesson are: Review counting and number recognition through a graphing activity, and to understand that weight is a measure of the heaviness of an object. The standards that relate to the content are K.MD.2. Compare two objects using measurable attributes (weight) and K.CC 6 Identify whether the number of objects in one group is greater than, less than, or equal to the number of objects in another group, e.g., by using matching and counting strategies. This lessons main focus aims to review counting and number recognition and to gain experience with graphing and interpreting data. The other part of the lesson is to expose students to measurement of weight.

2. Knowledge of Students to Inform Teaching For each of the categories listed below (a-d), describe what you know about your students prior learning and experiences with respect to the central focus of the learning segment. What do they know, what can they do and what are they are learning to do? Be very specific about how you have gained knowledge about your students. What sources of data have informed you? What teaching experiences have informed you? a) Academic development (e.g., prior knowledge, prerequisite skills, ways of thinking in the subject areas, developmental levels, special educational needs) This learning segment focuses on counting and making and interpreting a graph. My students can count to 10 but some of them do not have number recognition up to 10. My students, being kindergarteners, have limited experience with graphing. My students have made bar graphs this year in a whole group setting. We made a bar graph for how many letters in each students name,

a birthday bar graph, and a bar graph for the students favorite school subject. So they know what a bar graph looks like and they have seen one constructed. They have never done any on their own. The graph for this lesson has the students rolling dice and logging how many of each number they rolled. The prerequisite skills that they need are knowing numbers 1-6 and having one to one correspondence while counting. My students will not be able to immediately recognize each number as it is rolled. They will need to count the dots to determine which number it is. b) Academic Language development (e.g., students abilities to understand and produce the oral or written language associated with the central focus and standards/objectives within the learning segment) This learning segment does not require reading but does have an oral language component. Some of the goals for kindergarten center around speaking in full audible sentences. Learning vocabulary and speaking are very important parts of a childs development. When a student is called on he or she will tell answer my questions in complete audible sentences.

c) Family/community/cultural assets (e.g., relevant lived experiences, cultural expectations, and student interests) Through getting to know my students by conversations with them and veteran teachers, I have found that many students do not have experience playing board games. I have observed my students play math games and other games where they are asked to take turns. I was surprised to find that taking turns during a structured game posed a challenge for them. Taking turns for a five year old I no easy task when they are asked share a particular toy. I thought that taking turns during a rolling the dice game or other board game would be easier because turn taking is built into the activity. Why does lack of board game experience matter? I have to take that into

consideration when thinking about how to group my students and the flow of the activity. Since in the students lived experience does not include many board games, they do not have the automatic number recognition of the dice. That has implications for how long the game will take. I have a few students that might recognize the numbers right away but most of my students will need to count each dot every time they roll. That will take a more significant amount of time than if they did not have to count. I also know that I can not have my students work in pairs and share dice. I need a dice for each student. Just because they do not have much experience with board games does not mean that they will not think that this activity is fun. My students really like playing math games. I know this because they play a math Ipad game every day and they love it. When they get to go to a higher difficulty level in the game they get really excited.

d) Social and emotional development (e.g., ability to interact and express themselves in constructive ways, ability to engage in collaborative learning, nature of contributions to a positive literacy learning environment). What I know about my students social and emotional development is that kindergartners are all about themselves and how things affect them. Their world is very much self centered in their development. They want their turn to be every turn. If they do not get called on, they will get upset. My students sit in tables of four so they are used to working closely. At this point in the year they do not possess the skills necessary to work collaboratively in groups for long periods of time. It is for that reason that I have my students working individually. My students are continuing to learn how to solve problems amongst themselves and how to share. They know how to do those things but are still working on implementing them.

e) Learning strategies: what instructional and learning strategies have been effective for your students? How do you know?

My students really respond well to technology. Anytime I do a do now using some sort of presentation tool or involve the Ipad they are very engaged. I have noticed that when information is presented in some some sort of video or presentation that is projected from the overhead the students focus is much longer. Due to the nature of this lesson I will not be using technology in that way. I will be using another strategy that works well with my students, hands on activities. The nature of kindergarten is hands on in many ways. Kindergarten students learn well when they can manipulate objects or learn through playing games. I know that this strategy works well because I have seen a large jump in attention span when students are actively involved. The amount of time that my students can sit on the carpet for whole group instruction is very limited. When I have done activities where they are playing a game or actively involved I have seen a large decrease in behavior issues.

3. Supporting Student Learning Respond to prompts a-e below to explain how your plans support your students learning related to the central focus of the learning segment. As needed, refer to the instructional materials you have included to support your explanations. Cite research and theory to support your explanations. a) Explain how your understanding of your students prior learning, experiences and development guided your choice or adaptation of learning tasks and materials, to develop students' abilities to successfully meet lesson segment outcomes. For this lesson I knew that the main objectives were to review counting and number recognition. I know from other lessons and assessments that I have some students that would not be challenged enough with this lesson. They have already mastered counting and writing numbers 1-10. For those students I adapted the lesson to meet their needs. I added a task to the game. After completing their dice graph some of the students have to answer questions that require

interpreting the graph they made. I also adapted the assessment for each student. I have three different assessments that assess the students based on their ability level thus far.

b) How are the plans for instruction sequenced in the learning segment to build connections between students prior learning and experiences and new content skills and strategies? I like to have something old and new in each lesson. I start with the old or previous knowledge before introducing something new. For example In this lesson I have students remember back to when they weighed themselves at the beginning of the year. I also refer back to the other graphs we have made so they can see that they have had some success already. Before each section of a lesson I try to tap into their background knowledge even if it is just stating something that they have done. I think this is important because it shows students that each lesson has a bigger purpose and they are all connected in some way.

c) Explain how, throughout the learning segment, you will help students make connections between skills and strategies in ways that support their abilities to deepen their content learning. Like I stated before I like to have students make connections with previous learning and how each lesson related to another. For this learning segment I will informally ask students to describe their graph to me. Each day the students have to describe the weather chart to me. Asking them to describe the graph that they make during the game reinforces the idea the graphs need to be evaluated and interpreted across all subjects.

d) Describe common developmental approximations and misunderstandings within your content focus and how you will address them. A misunderstanding that may occur might deal with the do now where I weigh two objects and the students need to determine which one is heavier. The students may think that the object that

is raised higher on the pan balance is the heavier one because it is higher. They may think this because they have been comparing lengths of objects and know that the longer items are taller. I will address this by correcting them and explain that the heavier object weighs more. I will tell them to think like it is a teeter totter. The heavier person goes down and the lighter person goes up.

e) Describe any instructional strategies planned to support students with specific learning needs. This will vary based on what you know about your students, but may include students with IEPs, English learners, or gifted students needing greater support or challenge. My students vary widely in ability level across all subjects. That is in part due to some of them not going to a formal pre school program and others going to very good pre schools. For that reason I need to play all of my lessons keeping in mind that there are some students that need extra support and others that need to be challenged more. For this lesson I am having the students that need more of a challenge work with a higher level of blooms. They will have to analyze the graphs that they make during the game they play. This lesson is geared toward my students that still need more practice with number concept. For my students that struggle with numbers, this lesson is at their level. The first thing that I did when I saw this lesson in the everyday math curriculum was adapt it for my higher students. Success criteria for Supporting Student Learning: See Danielson Framework Domain 1e

4. Supporting Student Understanding and Use of Academic Language Respond to the prompts below to explain how your plans support your students academic language development. a) Identify the key academic language demand and explain why it is integral to the central focus for the segment and appropriate to students academic language development. Consider language functions and language forms, essential vocabulary, and/or phrases for the concepts and skills

being taught, and instructional language necessary for students to understand or produce oral and/or written language within learning tasks and activities. Since learning new vocabulary is very important, many academic words should be used in each lesson. This lesson the students will be introduced to the following words: weight, compare, column, heavier, lighter, level, balanced and equal. These words are not formally taught but they are used and briefly explained.

b) Explain how planned instructional supports will assist students to understand academic language related to the key language demand to express and develop their content learning. Describe how planned supports vary for students at different levels of academic language development. I deliberately choose to use higher levels of vocabulary with my students of all language development stages. I do this because they need exposure to rich language. Many of my students have parents that work full time jobs. There is not always an adult at home that has time to sit down with them and do homework or just to talk. I make it a point to talk to my students in formal register, or standard American English. This is important because they might not be hearing much of this at home. Culturally standard American English is not the most spoken register in the home. This is the case in many cultures and if they are not hearing it at home then they need to hear it at school. For my students that may be at a higher level of language development I might explain my vocabulary more in depth. For my other students that are at more beginning stages of language development just exposing them to the words might be sufficient.

5. Monitoring Student Learning a) Explain how the informal and formal assessments you select and/or designed will provide evidence you will use to monitor student progress toward the standards/objectives. Consider how

the assessments will provide evidence of students use of content specific skills and strategies to promote rigorous learning. The assessments that I selected directly relate to the counting and recognizing objective of my lesson. Each student will receive an exit slip that has pictured of dice on it. For each problem the student has to count the number of dots on each dice and record the number in the box. This can be a difficult task for some students because they have to count each dice and then produce the correct number. The assessment will tell me if the students have one to one correspondence when counting as well as number identification. Informally I will be looking to see if my students are making their graphs correctly.

b) Describe any modifications or accommodations to the planned assessment tools or procedures that allow students with specific needs to demonstrate their learning. My assessment is tiered into three groups based on difficulty level. I group students for their assessment based on prior assessments on similar skills. For example the students have been assessed on an activity where they had to count and write the number. Based on assessments such as M class and classroom observation, the students were given a counting exit slip with either numbers 1-6, 7-11, and 11-20. Student performance on those assessments is what I used to determine which students receive which assessment for this lesson. The assessment either has only one dice for the students to count, two dice or three dice. Another accommodation for this lesson was made for the students that need more of a challenge. I am having some students answer questions about interpreting the graph that they made. They have to read the question and write the answer. The exit slips can be found here:

Low

Medium High

Assessment of Learning Paper

Assessing student learning 1. Summarize student performance in narrative and/or graphic form (e.g., table or chart). Student performance on the assessment was what I expected. The assessment was differentiated by ability levels and after looking at the results I can say that students performed well on their given assessment. 100 percent of students who received the low assessment were able to correctly label all of the dice. The low assessment was labeling one dice per question. That means the student has to have a solid knowledge of the numbers 1-6. After analyzing the data I see that the group of students that received the low assessment is ready to move to higher numbers. 50 percent of the students that received the medium assessment were able to correctly label all of the dice. The medium assessment had student counting and labeling two dice. A strong sense of the numbers 2-12 was needed to be successful at the medium assessment. 100 percent of students with the high assessment was able to label the dice correctly. The high assessment had students counting and labeling 3 dice. To be successful at the high assessment students needed to have a strong sense of the numbers 3-18.

2. Discuss what students appear to understand well and where they continue to struggle, including any misunderstandings, developmental approximations, confusions, or needs (including a need for greater challenge). My assessment was a dice counting worksheet. Students were to count the dots on the dice and label what number each dice shows. Students were able to do that consistently through the class.

My students have a strong understanding of one to one correspondence when counting. That was evident when students were able to successfully write the number of dots on each dice. No student had trouble doing that. A misunderstanding that I noticed took place for half of the students that received the medium assessment. Since the medium assessment had students counting multiple dice some students counted each dice separately instead of adding the dots together. They all correctly labeled each dice with the correct number shown but they were supposed to count them all together.

3.Consider common patterns across the class as well as groups of students with similar strengths or needs. Cite evidence to support your analysis from the 3 student work samples you selected. The misconception stated above was a common pattern for my students. They counted each dice separately. I selected 3 work samples a high, medium, and low level assessment. The student that received the medium assessment was one of the students that counted the dice separately. Even though the student labeled the dice separately they correctly labeled the individual dice. For example the first problem on the medium worksheet was 2 dice one showing 4 and the other showing 6. The correct answer should have been 10. The student wrote a 4 and a 6. Due to the correct labeling of the individual dice I know that this student has strong one to one correspondence and knowledge of numbers 1-6. Due to the misconception that this student had I do not know however if the student has a knowledge of the numbers 7-12. The students that received the high and low assessments all understood the concepts that were assessed.

4.Refer to your learning progression analysis you created from your student work samples. Describe individual learning strengths and weaknesses of your high performing and your low performing student.

One of the strengths of my high performing student was strong knowledge of numbers 3-18. A weakness of my high performing student was neat number writing. The student wrote their 5s backwards. This lesson was not designed to asses number writing but it was interesting to see the difference in quality of writing between a high and low performing students. A strength of my low performing student was getting the questions that they completed correct. A weakness was the amount of questions completed. In the 15 minutes given for the exit ticket this student completed 5 questions. That is 3 minutes per question. That information is very valuable for me moving forward as it tells me something about the automaticity of his number sense.

Feedback to Guide Further Learning: Something that I did not even think about when planning for this lesson was providing feedback. Feedback was something that I did not relate to kindergarten students before teaching this lesson. Then I realized that anytime my students ask or answer a question in class I provide them feedback. If they are not giving me the answer that I am looking for I ask in a different way or let them know that they need to think about it in a different way. When students read to me during guided reading I am constantly providing them feedback. If they read a word incorrectly I ask them to sound it out again or look at the pictures. Feedback can be a very powerful teaching tool if used correctly. Something that I feel is a next step for my practice is to take students work and give them feedback the next day. I want to give students a chance to see what they are doing correctly and incorrectly. I need to push myself to be able to come up with more paper pencil tasks for my students to complete. That will give me better data to inform my instruction. Since kindergarten is mostly observational record keeping it will be a challenge to create assessments that will accurately tell me if my students are learning the content. The next time I do a planning commentary I will make sure to provide good feedback for my students.

Using Assessment to Inform Instruction For the prompts below, consider what you know about your students and the effectiveness of your instruction when designing next steps. Be sure to connect your next steps to your analysis of the student performances. 1. Based on your analysis of student performance in the assessment, describe next steps for instruction for the whole class. Based on the results of the assessments it is clear that I need to focus on giving more clear directions for my next assessment. Since I was not clear about adding the dots on the medium assessments my data is not as valuable. 5 out of 10 students that received the medium assessment had the misconception that they had to count the dice individually. Because of that misconception i do not know if 5 of my students have number sense of numbers 7-12. Assessments play a very important role of my planning process. If students are not doing them correctly due to poor directions then I am not receiving the data that I need to move them forward. Another next step is pushing my students in each group to the next level. That means having the low and medium group work with higher numbers and into the teens. The high students will begin to work with 100s grids and base 10 blocks.

2. Describe any individualized next steps for the 2 focus students. For my high focus student I will need to push them to higher number sense activities. Now that I know that this student knows numbers 1-18 I can move them to base ten blocks and place value using higher numbers. For my low focus student I will need to have them continue working with numbers 1-10. Since the student only completed 5 problems I do not have enough data to prove mastery. I will give my low focus student less problems so they can feel successful. If this student is consistently not finishing his assessments or assignments he may lose confidence.

3. Explain how these next steps follow from your analysis of the student performances.

These next steps closely reflect the performance of my students. I will be making my next instructional decision based on how they did. I took the information gained from their assessments and decided to make sure to be more specific in my directions to prevent misconceptions. I will challenge my high students more because they performed so well on this assessment. I will need to re asses the middle students because of their misconception.