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Comparing Quantities of 5 and 10 Redesigned: Lesson Plan Critique

Diana Loewen

ETEC 512
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Part One: Lesson Plan Critique Comparing Quantities with 5 and 10

This lesson is designed for a Grade One math class. The Nelson Math Focus program is not

designed to be taught at specific times of the instructional year, although certain units would obviously

have to be taught after another. For example, one would not teach Number to 20 without first teaching

Number to 12. The lesson I have chosen comes midway through the Number to 12 unit. Students by

now have mastered the concept of counting forward to 12, and have been introduced to counting

backward. It is hoped they have some skill in one-to-one correspondence from kindergarten.

Where there is Difficulty

This lesson plan is quite teacher-centered and for a lesson that is this long (50-60 minutes), it is

difficult to keep students at this age engaged. Behaviourists like Bandura might argue that students can

learn through observation, but they are still being expected to sit still while the teacher asks them

questions and waits for responses for 10-15 minutes. Bandura in his paper Social Learning Theory says,

A person cannot learn much if he does not attend to, or recognize the models behavior. One of the

component functions in learning by example is attentional behavior,(Bandura, 1971) In other words,

even though the children should be able to learn through observing and listening to the teacher and

their peers, they must first be actually listening to their teacher and their peers. This is a difficult thing to

do for an active 5-7 year old child who has already been sitting still for 11 minutes.

Learning Theories Present within the Lesson and How Theyre Used

Behaviourism

This lesson is very teacher-directed. Students spend a lot of time gathered in a group, listening to the

teacher ask a question and then elicit a response. After listening to the teacher ask questions of their

peers and model the expected learning, students will then complete a worksheet that has an
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independent component and a partner component. The stimulus is engagement in the lesson and the

expected response will be that they have retained the appropriate amount of information to complete

the independent activity.

Vygotsky, scaffolding and Zone of Proximal Development

In this lesson plan, the teacher guides expected learning. The teacher asks questions and

prompts learning from the students by demonstrating what they wish them to learn. Scaffolding occurs

when the teacher guides students from the concrete activity of counting the letters in their name to the

more abstract idea that the letters in their name are more or less than 5. Many students will be working

in their Zone of Proximal Development because they have not had a lot of practice with the terms

less/more than or equal to.

Piaget

Piaget believed that students at age 5-7 are at the preoperational stage and transitioning to the

concrete operational stage of cognitive development. At this age they are quite egocentric. One thing

this lesson does well is use their own name to hook them into the activity. The Getting Started portion

of the lesson also uses snap cubes for the children to represent the numbers in their name as many

children at this age are still not yet able to make the transition from the concrete to the abstract in

numeracy.

Constructivism

The last part of this lesson invites the learners to Reflect and Connect with the experiences of

the lesson. The act of analysis and reflection is a very effective constructivist technique and a nice way

to regroup after the activity. Although I mentioned it under Piaget, the use of the names is also

significant for Constructivism because it is a universal knowledge base for all the students in the class.
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They come to the classroom with the knowledge of what their name is and (hopefully) what letters are

in their name.

Part Two: Analysis of Lesson Redesign

One of the biggest challenges my colleagues and I faced when teaching this lesson was the sense

that we were being rushed. It seems like the lesson plans timing is only for the direct teaching portion

and not for the student activity itself. If that is the case, the direct teaching is quite long for one lesson.

So, since it seemed to be a natural progression, I broke it into three lessons and kept the idea of

scaffolding the concept.

Vygotsky

Vygotsky introduced the theory of scaffolding as, a teacher helping a learner work in their Zone

of Proximal Development until they are capable of doing it on their own. Lesson One begins as very

teacher-directed with only one short partner activity. Lesson Two is still quite teacher-directed as the

concept of more/less than 5 is introduced in this lesson. However, group work is used in this lesson.

Through this peer interaction, struggling students may learn the concept from their more capable peers.

This also allows the teacher time to circulate and assess or intervene, if necessary. I introduced a game

in the first lesson and it is used again here to reinforce the language more/less than and equal to. Lesson

3 is almost exclusively student-centered. There is a short teacher-led introduction, but during the lesson,

I planned for student teachers to do most of the teaching. The worksheet activity is from the original

lesson.

Cognitive Neuroscience

One major problem I had with the original lesson plan was that it had students sitting and

listening to the teacher talk and ask questions for 10-15 minutes before moving to gather around a
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table. From my professional experience I try not to have them sitting any longer in minutes than their

age in years. So for this age group, I try to keep lessons to about 6 or 7 minutes before a brain break of

some kind.

In cognitive neuroscience there is a field of study called multiple intelligences. Howard Gardner

theorized that every human was strongly intelligent in at least one of eight areas such as visual-spatial,

verbal-linguistic, musical-rhythmic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, etc. In school we often

focus too much on one or two kinds of intelligences and leave out the other. I found the original lesson

was very verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical, so I added something for students who are more

bodily-kinesthetic. Just adding the action of clapping the letters in ones name is enough to add that

body-brain connection that many kinesthetic learners need. I added a game for all three lessons that

would reinforce the concept in a kinesthetic way.

Continuing with multiple intelligences, I decided to give the students their name cards (Lesson

One), for one major reason: at this age many students find it difficult to make abstract mathematical

connections. The original lesson had their name cards in a pocket chart in the front of the class and I

suppose a student might be able to air finger count the letters of their name. But is it not more

accurate if they can touch the letters and make that one-to one correspondence? This will help those

tactile kinesthetic learners, but many of the other intelligences, including the logical-mathematical ones

who love to find patterns and make connections. It is easier to do that when it is right there in your

hand.

Constructivism

I wanted to use constructivist elements in this lesson. One of the things I really liked about this

lesson is that it uses student names. At this age they find this very engaging because to them, that word

is the most important one. So the lesson begins with this knowledge base. They all (hopefully) know the
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letters in their name. If they do not, and sometimes there might be a struggling student, letter cubes can

be used in place of unifix cubes. From this point students are building knowledge that other names have

different numbers of letters. Piaget was a theorist behind constructivism and he said that children at this

age were egocentric. For some 5-7 year olds it is a mind-opener just to realize that their best-friends

name does not have the same number of letters as their own.

In Lesson 3, students have enough knowledge that the teacher should be able to facilitate the

lesson and allow students to teach each other. I designed an Oops! Silly teacher! hook which they can

correct by using their knowledge from the previous lessons. The only part of that lesson that may need

teacher-direction are the instructions for completing the worksheet activity, which previous students

have found a little confusing, but hopefully having had more practice on the concepts, the children will

now find it easy. Finally, I kept the reflective end of the original lesson which are also constructivist

because I think those are a good way to reiterate the important idea you want the students to come

away with at the end of the lesson.

The original lesson plan has some amazing literature connection ideas which I would not

change. Nor would I wish to change the Opportunities for Feedback assessment section, although Im

always walking around with my iPod and interviewing my students, or taking pictures for my own

assessment purposes. In conclusion, I believe that I have simplified and improved this lesson by:

keeping what I think are some of the better elements of the original lesson plan, slowing the pacing,

allowing more repetition and reflection, incorporating movement, and adding student-led aspects in the

final lesson.

References

Bandura, A. (1971), Social Learning Theory, Stanford University, New York: General Learning Corp. 1-46.

Smith, Mark K. (2002, 2008) Howard Gardner and multiple intelligences, the encyclopedia of informal
education, http://www.infed.org/mobi/howard-gardner-multiple-intelligences-and-education.
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Good, R., Mellon, E. K., Kromhout, R. A. (1978). The work of Jean Piaget. Journal of Chemical
Engineering, 55, 688-693.

John-Steiner, V. & Mahn, H. (1996). Sociocultural approaches to learning and development: A

Vygotskian framework, Educational Psychologist, 31, 191-206

Von Glasersfeld, E. (2008). Learning as a Constructive Activity. AntiMatters, 2(3), 33-49.

Nelson Math Focus 1: Teachers Resource, (2008) Nelson, a division of Thomson Canada Ltd. 20-21

Part 3: Lesson Redesigned

Lesson One: How Many Letters in My Name?
Target Concepts: 1. The student will be able to count the number of letters in their name.
2. The student will be able to confidently assert the number of letters in their
name.
Time allotted: (35-45 minutes)
Materials: Name cards for each student
Unifix cubes

Introduction to Concept
Group Lesson: Call up at least 7 students and have them hold up their name cards. Ensure that there are
several names with the same number of letters. Read the cards one at a time and then begin to sort
them by number. Looking at their names cards, can anyone see why Ive put Student A, B and C or
Student D, and E together? Where should Student F stand? Wiggle your fingers if you agree. Continue
until all names are organized. Discuss the lengths of the different names. Whose name has 5 letters?
More than 5? Less than 5? Have your volunteers sit down.

Reinforcement of Concept
Game: Choose an action: for example, have students clap or, if it is not disruptive, jump the number of
letters in their name. Call out a number and only the students whose names have that number of letters
may do the action.

Concept in Action
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Activity: Provide snap cubes and ask students to make a cube train to match the number of letters in
their name. Have students compare their train to an elbow partner by holding their train up to their
partners train. Does your train have more or less cubes than your partner?

Reflect and Connect

Gather and Reflect:

Whose name has 5 letters?

Whose name has more than 5 letters?
Whose name has less than 5 letters?

Day Two: More or Less Than 5

Target Concepts: 1. The student will be able to determine whether the number of letters in their name
is more than, less than or equal to 5.

2. The student will begin to use the terms more than, less than and equal to in an
appropriate mathematical way

Time allotted: (40-50 minutes)

Materials:
Student Name cards
Large 10-frames on 11x17 paper (enough so that your class may work in groups of 4)
Projector and tablet or document reader with a copy of a ten frame OR Poster 1B and some
Post-Its
Unifix cubes

Introduction to Concept
Prior to the lesson large 10-frames have been set up around the classroom allowing your class to be
divided into groups of four or five. Display a ten frame either from a projector and tablet (or document
reader) or use the Display Poster 1B. Hold up 3 fingers. Whose name has this many letters? Right Im
showing the three letters in [Adis] name. Place three cubes (if using digital technology) on the ten
frame, or three post-its on the poster. Now Im thinking of a name with [4] letters. Im going to put
cubes on another 10-frame to show the number of letters. How many squares of the 10-frame will I
fill? Show me on your fingers. (lesson continues unchanged from Math Focus Chapter 2 Number to 12
page 20, until)

Reinforcement of Concept
Game: Choose an action: for example, have students clap or, if it is not disruptive, jump. Students will
perform the action only if their names are either:

1. More than 5
2. Less than 5,
3. The same as 5 (equal to)
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Concept in Action
Group Activity: Break students into groups of 4 or five and allow them to go to large ten-frame posters
in the classroom. Give them time to spell their name on the 10-frame and decide if it is more or less
than 5.

Reflection
Gather and Reflect:

Whose name is shorter than the top row? How many more cubes do you need to fill the top
row?
Whose name fits exactly in the top row? How many letters do you have in your name?
Whose name takes up more than one row? How many more cubes do you need to fill the ten
frame?
Whose name is too long for the 10-frame? How many extra cubes did you have?

Lesson 3 Less Than/ More Than 10

Target Concepts: 1. The student will recognize whether the number of letters in their name and the
names of others is more or less than 10.

2. The student will use the terms more than, less than, and equal to effectively.

Time Allotted: (35-40 Minutes)

Materials:
Student name cards
Copies of Activity 2.4
Poster 1B

Introduction to the Concept

Group Lesson: Have the student name cards displayed in a pocket chart under cards labelled Number of
Letters in My Name. I seem to have had some trouble putting out the name cards this morning. I put
Riteshs name under 4 letters and Adis name under 9 letters. Can you help me? Elicit student help to
put all student name cards back in the correct position in the pocket chart. Have them explain their
reason for putting the cards where they do.

Reinforcing the Concept

Game: Choose an action: for example, have students clap or, if it is not disruptive, jump. Students will
perform the action only if their names are either:
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1. More than 5 4. More than 10

2. Less than 5, 5. Less than 10
3. Equal to 5 6. Equal to 10

Concept in Action

Activity: Display poster 1B. Remind students of the group activity that was completed in the previous
lesson. If appropriate, student may be asked to repeat the activity and the key learning concept. Today,
you are going to do the same activity, but on paper. You will also be asked how many letters are in
your name. Where can you look for that answer? (Accept a few answers) You will also be asked
whether your name is more or less than 5. How do you know? Choose a student teacher to answer.
The answer should mention filling the top of the 10-frame if it is more and not filling the top if it is less.
If this answer is not forthcoming, some teacher guidance may be necessary. Finally, you will be asked
whether your name is more or less than 10. The next step is to find a partner and repeat the activity
with THEIR name. Give an example and check for understanding.

Reflect and Connect

Gather and Reflect: Inform the students that today they will be thinking about their partners
names and not their own name. Remind them that they can look at the pocket chart name sort if
they need help. Note: You may wish to have these questions on a card and have student leader read
them out.

Whose partners name is more than 5?

Whose partners name is less than 5?
Whose partners name is equal to 5?