Professional Documents
Culture Documents
was one titled Fill the Sleds which involved coloring in different areas on
grid paper. The player would roll two dice, and the number on one die would
serve as the number of squares in a column, and the other die would give the
number of squares in a row. The player would then color in the box that it
made and would need to determine the number of squares in their box (dice
1 X dice 2 = amount in the box). The other activity we did involved paper
bowls and unifix cubes, and Jonathan had to roll two dice again. One die
represented the number of bowls, and the other represented the number of
cubes in each bowl. I thought these two activities would give Jonathan good
experience with directly modeling multiplication problems so that he could
see how numbers were being grouped together as they were being
multiplied. When working with place values, we played a game called Race
to 100 in which we used the base 10 blocks. In this game, we would use the
flat square base 10 block that represents 100 as our game board, and would
roll some dice to get the amount to place on the game board. Players would
take turns, and the first person to get to 100 (fills up the game board) would
be the winner! I thought this would be a good game to play to test where
Jonathan was in this area because I could see if he could recognize how many
single 1s pieces he needed before he could substitute it out for a 10s piece,
and I would be able to see if he could easily transition between counting by
10s to counting by 1s. Jonathan really excelled in this game, so I quickly
decided that he did not need any more work on place values.
I believed that it would be appropriate to focus on adding multi-digit numbers
specifically because most of math builds on the idea of addition and we
sometimes must add very large numbers while we are working on
multiplication problems and so on. I wanted to help Jonathan with the
conceptual understanding of multiplication as well because it is most likely
what the students will be moving into next in their classroom, if they havent
already. Also, it is key to understand multiplication before moving onto
concepts like division. I intended to reinforce ideas behind place values
because understanding place value is crucial when adding or subtracting
larger numbers, as Jonathan needs to know what place values to line up and
why.
2. Growth in the Childs Mathematical Proficiency
Jonathan, as mentioned earlier, seemed to be very confidant already in his
work that involved place values, and I therefore ceased working with that
area and moved onto others. In regards to his work with multi-digit numbers
in the 99 or bust game, Jonathan grew in that by the end of our sessions he
could more easily line up the two numbers that he was adding on paper and
therefore made less mistakes when adding them together. Jonathan also
demonstrated his knowledge in what it meant to carry a number to the
next place value over when adding them - which he did not seem to fully
grasp at the beginning of our sessions. He demonstrated this as he was
working on adding numbers such as 34+18 and would say statements such
as 4+8 is 12 so I would write the 2 and then carry the 10. This showed me
on, rather than only focusing on giving him practice with things he has
already encountered.
5. Reflecting on My Professional Growth
I feel that I have grown professionally both in my time management skills and
in my ability to judge what exactly a child can comprehend when it comes to
a particular topic. At the beginning of this tutoring experience, I often
planned too much for Jonathan and I to work on in one session and we did not
cover all the activities that I had planned. By the end of the sessions,
however, I was able to more accurately judge how long it would take us to
complete each game or activity and I could better adjust that activity as we
were doing it in order to ensure that we hit all the crucial concepts of the
lesson that I had planned. I also believe that I became more skilled in
understanding what exactly it was that Jonathan knew about each concept as
I was working with him, and this helped me to develop a lesson that better
catered around his needs. For example, I felt that in the first few activities I
sometimes accidently skipped over understandings in a concept and didnt
realize until later that I should have spent more time going over a certain
idea. By the end of tutoring Jonathan, I more quickly spotted when he needed
more assistance on a specific part of a concept or game and could therefore
help him much more than I had before.