MIAA 340 Running Reflection January 11, 2014

January 11, 2014

1. How would using these routines (high yield routines) help build equity in your classroom?

Learning math and solving math problems is a process. Implementing these high yield routines in my classroom
would bring equity to my classroom through multiple ways. For instance, when using the Mystery Number
strategy, not all of my students would get the correct answer in the allotted time. However, hopefully, everyone
would at least have a good start. It would be important for me to acknowledge and validate those students that
are still struggling to get the answer, but have at least began to use strategies to solve the Mystery Number
question; reminding everyone that math is a process and that it takes time.

2. Pages 26-34 What strategic choices did Ms. Clements use and how did this uncover student thinking?

The strategies that Ms. Clements used to find out what Dorothy understood about counting and addition were
varied. They included creating a list of equations using one-digit numbers that total 10. This allowed Clements
to see that Dorothy could indeed see the patterns of the facts family. Clements also played a game with Dorothy
to help reinforce these patterns and help cement the commutative property into Dorothys strategy toolbox.
Another tool that Clements used was having Dorothy draw a picture of her thought process (page 28), 9+4=13.
Clements also gave Dorothy the opportunity to practice her new skills. This was helpful in that it helped
Dorothy break her habit of counting by ones and using her fingers to add. These various strategies helped feed
into the big picture strategy of helping Dorothy learn to decompose and reconstruct parts of the addends to
find the answer to these equations.

These strategies helped uncover Dorothys thinking by allowing Clements to have a better understanding of
what Dorothy already knew about the operation of addition and about Dorothys reasoning skills. By using
these various strategies, Clements could not only see what abilities Dorothy had, but also where her deficits
were. Clements continued to build upon Dorothys knowledge base and gave her some powerful tools to help
her not only know the process of addition, but also to understand the process.

3. Briefly summarize how the articles increased your content knowledge.
These two articles helped increase my content knowledge about area in that I learned some vocabulary
(canted=tilted or slanted) and I also learned that area goes beyond length X width. I was also reminded (once
again), that area is best taught by letting the students learn through hands-on activities before giving out any
formulas. In fact, it is even better if the students come up with the formulas themselves. I tend to forget thisI
find Im a slave to the pacing calendar!

4. Explain how you think increasing your content knowledge will better help you be able to differentiate.
These two articles helped me realize that by increasing my content knowledge in the study of area, I would be
better prepared to differentiate my lessons. The first article I read broke down the study of area into four distinct
concepts (compare and order, informal units of measure, formal units of measure, and measurement sense).
After doing a pre-assessment and informal assessing, I would know where my students strengths are and be
able to plan lessons according to their knowledge base and the four concepts needed to learn area.

Going backwards a bit, by having a stronger sense of the content Im teaching, I would be better at creating pre-
assessments and informal assessments that would truly reflect the learning landscape of my studentswhich
would aide me in creating specific, differentiated lessons.