Weekly Clinical Reflection 1

Entry 1: February 1st, 2017

Standard Covered: K.OA.3: I can decompose a number in more than one way.

Introduction activity:
Today I was observing in Ms. Burns Kindergarten class at Nathaniel Alexander Elementary
School. Today the class was continuing to practice with making combinations of numbers. The
opening activity was designed to engage the students in the work that they would be
completing, or the games that they would be participating in later. The students were all
gathered on the carpet in front of the board. Ms. Burns directed the students to find a group of
three, and then to sit down with their group on the carpet. As students found their groups, they
sat with them. When all of the groups were sitting, Ms. Burns asked the students to count how
many boys, and how many girl were in each group. She made
a T-chart on the board showing that there were different
combinations of boys and girls in each group. For example,
when there was two girls, then there was only one boy in the
group. Together they still made a group of three. Students
understood and responded when discussing the different
combinations of three. After this activity, the students returned
to their spots on the carpet. Ms. Burns continued to discuss
what the combinations meant and how students could find them.
She continued to reinforce the idea of the combinations with the
number three. She made her way to the spot on the board
labeled Number of the Day. This is where the students break
down a certain number each
day. Today was the number
3. So on the board Ms.
Burns wrote, 3, three, and
marked three tally marks. The students then were able to
come and make combinations of three with blue and green
dots on a ten frame. All of the combinations related back to
the previous activity with boys and girls.
After engaging students in some combination
practice, the students were ready to go to work in partners.
To continue working with combinations, students were going
to play a game with their partner. The game was called Lady
Bug-Chip Toss. The ladybugs back was divided in half and
students had to drop five colored chips (the red and yellow
sided counters). When students dropped them they had to
move all of the red ones to one side of the ladybug, then the
yellow ones to the other side. Then they had to discuss the combination of what it made. For
example, three red chips and two yellow chips, equals five chips in all. Students continued to
do this and were encouraged to record their findings on a piece of paper.
 To end math time, students were introduced to another new game. This game students
had ten snap cubes each. One student would draw a number card and build that number with
the snap cubes. The next student would also draw a number card and build their number with
the cubes. The student with the lower number had to count on to figure out how many they
needed to add to make their cube sticks equal. The game is titled Make it Equal. This game
was slightly different from the others that the students worked on today, but it was a way of
having students think about different combinations.

Weekly Clinical Reflection 2

February 8th, 2017
Standard Covered: K.OA.3: I can decompose a number in more than one way.

This week in my clinicals the students were still focusing on making different
combinations of numbers. As always, the class starts out with
a class meeting in the morning and then quickly transitions
into math time. During math time, the students always have a
number of the day, but todays number was nine. The
teacher goes through all the different ways to represent nine.
She writes out the number, 9. She spells out the number,
nine. She marks how many tallies there are; which also helps
with the skill of cardinality. After Ms. Burns goes through all of
the ways, there is time to put blue circles on a ten frame. So a
student came up, and put nine blue dots on the ten frame.
From there, the students can take away one blue dot, replace
it with a green dot, and then determine the number of blue and
green dots to create an equation that will give
you all the combinations of nine. As the
students came and replaced the blue dots
with green dots, Ms. Burns wrote down the
equations as they stated them. They worked
out to get all of the different combinations of
nine. The teacher posed the question, do
you see any types of patterns? The students
were able to point out that as one number of
the equation went down, the other number
went up, and it still was equal to nine. The
students were then able to relate that back to
the other numbers that they had previously
covered, like eight the day before.
As students made their way back to their seats, they were to begin to work on their
number nine flip book. Students had to color in all of the different combinations that they
covered of the number nine. After they colored in the different combinations, they were to fill in
the equation that went with it. They would then cut different slits in the paper where they did the
 combinations and paste it over the paper that they filled
in the equations. The final product resulted in students
being able to flip open the combination sheet, to see
the matching equation underneath it.
When students completed the given activity for
the combinations of nine, they were paired up to play
different math review games. The particular game that
students were playing were, Get the Bear Home.
Students would draw a card that had a one digit, by one
digit addition or subtraction problem. They had to solve
the problem in order to see how many spaces they could move their bear. The winner was the
person who got their bear home first. Students did not participate in this game very long, it was
just a review while some students finished up their independent work. After all students were
finished, they came back to the carpet to play a math game for a few minutes before it was time
to transition into reading time. The math game that they played as a class, was one digit by one
digit addition problems. However, this game required students to look a jumps on a number
line, two that were in different colors, and then they had to pick the equation that related to that
specific number line.

Weekly Clinical Reflection Entry 3

Entry 3: February 15, 2017
Standard Covered: K.OA.3: I can decompose (break) a number in more than one way.
 Today I was working in Ms. Burns class again. The students have been working on the
same standard. Students have been working on breaking down and decomposing numbers.
Every morning, math is the first thing, after morning work, that the students will do. Every
morning the students come together on the carpet to begin math
time as a class. In the past weeks, the students have worked
on number of the day, but it was not that way this week.
Instead the students started off working on an activity of Part-
Part-Whole. In this activity the students had to pick a number
between 2-10. They then had to break down the number that
they chose, and make a flipbook on the numbers that would
represent breaking down that number. (The following pictures
will show that). In this example, the number eight was chosen
as the whole. From there the number can be decomposed into
the numbers five and three. The
students will need to represent
the number with pictures for each
number.

As students were working on this

activity, I was able to work with a small
group of students at the back table. During
the small group time, I worked specifically
with three students that have problems with
identifying numbers 11-20. The first thing
that I would do is have the students draw a

card. All of the

cards
were
numbered 11-20, and they had to
say the number. Some of the
students needed to count on the
number line because they would
only know the name of the number by saying all of the numbers leading up to it. After
students named the number, they would have to use snap cubes to fill in the numbers on the
number line until they reached the given number. After they did that, they checked that they had
the correct number by transferring the cubes to a ten frames. After they knew they had the
number correct from the number line and the ten frames, they could then build their number into
tens and ones. The pictures that go along, will help explain the steps of the small group.
 After working with my students in the small group I was able to see the difficulties that
each student was having. One of the students have having trouble naming the numbers after
eleven. He would have to count out all of the numbers on the number line so he could
remember what the name of the numbers were as he continued. Another student had trouble
with one-to-one correspondence and would not give a value for each one counted, or would skip
over numbers, or would count numbers twice. And finally, the last student knew what was going
on and understands the concept, but just needed some more one-on-one guidance. It was a
good experience to be able to work one-on-one with the students. As they continued in the
small group, I was able to let each one of the work independently on separate numbers,
because one would be faster than another.

Weekly Clinical Reflection 4

Date: February 22, 2017
Standard Covered: K.OA.4: For any number from 1 to 9, find the number that makes 10
when added to the given number, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record the
answer with a drawing or equation.

I was back in Ms. Burns class again today for math time. To start of the day together the
students were able to share how they were going to try their best today. All students went
around and said I will try my best today to After students shared their statements, students
watched and sang along with a video, counting to 100. Ms. Burns told me that as she was
continuing to do individual assessments with students, it was showing that many of them could
not count to 100, so they were going to start reviewing that some. As we continued with math
time I was able to pull a small group again. Ms. Burns told me that I was going to have six
students in my group.
The first thing that we worked on as a group was one-to-one correspondence while
counting to 100. Students had to use their fingers and count to one hundred together, pointing
to each number as we continued to count. The students did very well counting together all the
way to one hundred. As students were counting, I was able to watch them while they pointed to
the number. I was able to correct students and get them back on the right track while pointing to
numbers as they continued to count. During the first round of counting to one hundred I had to
correct some students many times. I modeled and showed students how I wanted them to
count and point the next time that we started to count as a group. So we repeated that one
more time, counting and point to the numbers as we counted to one hundred. After we did the
second round of counting to 100, students flipped over the 100s Chart and had to count and fill
in the missing numbers. This was the most challenging things for the students and I had to
spend a lot of one-on-one time with specific students to get them started on that task.
If I had to do anything over today, it would be the organization of the small group.
Unfortunately for the levels of the students that were in the small group, six was too many
students. The students were on all different levels, both high and low. This made it difficult to
keep some students on track and to support other students that were frustrated in the process.
It would be easier to have the higher performing students in one group and the lower performing
students in another group.
While I was working in the small group, the other students were working in partners on a
game that involved using ten frames to get to the total number of ten. On the worksheet were
many different ten frames, with different numbers filled in. They then had to draw more objects
onto the ten frame, to get to the total of ten. They had to write the number sentence (equation)
with the number of objects that were already on the ten frame, and then how many they needed
to draw on there.

The following pictures of examples of students work from the small group lesson (higher
performing students).

Weekly Clinical Reflection 5

Entry 5: March 29, 2017
Standards Covered:
K.MD.B.3: Classify objects into given categories, count the number of objects in each
category, and sort the categories by count.
1.MD.C.4: Organize, represent, and interpret data with up to three categories; ask and
answer questions about the total number of data points, how many in each category, and
how many more or less are in on category that in another.

This week during math time, I was able to teach my whole group lesson. The
preparation for this was challenging for me, because I wasnt exactly sure how my Kindergarten
students would do with an indirect lesson. The lessons that they have now are fairly directed,
so it was interesting to see how they would react to more freedom. The engage section of my
lesson went really well. Students actively participated in the data collection that we did as a
class and it also gave student choice within it. They were interested to find out facts from their
peers as well. Students seemed to have a very surface level understanding of what a bar graph
looked like. So we went through the steps of how to create and input data into the bar graph.
However, the explore section of the lesson plan was the part in which students struggled
the most. Looking back at how things went, there are many things that I would change in this
part of the lesson. When I first introduced this part of the lesson, students were instructed to
work with a partner to collect data and build a graph. The students were asked to find out which
sports their friends liked, or what their favorite color was. This was hard for students to do. If I
were to change this section, I would have done different stations and would have had the
students go to those stations. At each station I would have had a group of manipulatives that
students would have to sort, whether that be by shape, color, etc. This would have allowed
students to still be able to collect data, by it not being explicitly given to them, but would have
still allowed some freedom in that collection. It would have been a lot easier for classroom
management purposes also. From those stations, students would have been able to build the
bar graphs, based on the manipulatives that they had at the station. That is the main thing
throughout the lesson that I would have changed.
Overall, the students seemed to have a better understanding of how to create a bar
graph at the end of the lesson. Even though part of the lesson didnt go as planned, the exit
ticket showed that there was some understanding among many students to how to create a bar
graph. Students were given the data for the exit ticket, however, answering questions based on
the bar graph was still difficult for them. It is nice to be able to reflect on lessons after teaching
them. After this math lesson I was also able to discuss different things with my teacher. She
was able to give me some very practical ways to allow exploration among kindergartners,
without it being too much freedom. It was definitely a learning experience to see how to allow
students to explore, but also guide them along the way.