Mary Wirick

April 11, twenty07

Math 154

Observations

Allie when she got excited, like most first graders, had problems with paying

attention to what she was supposed to be doing. I feel that progress was definitely made

through out the time that we worked together. At the beginning she only missed a few

problems on each work sheet.

She started out being able to count to twenty, although she could do that without

a chart she sometimes required a little bit of prompting. After a few weeks practice she

was able to count to thirty with very few mistakes. Later she even became able to count

to fourty without using a chart to look at. At the end of our sessions she was able to

count to 100 with use of a chart without being told what any of the numbers on the chart

were. After she did that the first time she looked surprised and happy that she could do

it, the first few times she mad mistakes like saying fifty-fifty and sixty-sixty instead of

fifty-five and sixty-six. She did it a total of four times during our last session together so

that she could familiarize herself with the numbers and eventually learn to do it without

them.

At the beginning we worked on her ability to recognize whether to put a plus or

minus sign in between the numbers to make the number sentence correct. At first she

was getting the problems wrong, probably because she was not used to having two

people teaching her math. After I carefully explained how to tell which sign would go

were, by looking at which number was bigger the first or last, she understood which sign

to place between the numbers. Another problem she had that is common with her age

group is that she wrote her fives twos sixes and sometimes even nines backwards and the
 Mary Wirick
April 11, twenty07
Math 154

number twenty she wrote as zero two. We also worked on a dot-to-dot for number

sequencing practice.

She matched written words with the numeric symbols in one of the worksheets.

We also went over addition problems starting with adding numbers that were less than

ten. The next addition worksheet was about adding numbers to the number ten. Then

another addition worksheet went over adding numbers together that would equal a sum

greater than ten. When we reached that worksheet she also started to work on regrouping

numbers so that she could have a ten and another number. The last worksheet that we

did that had to do with addition she separated numbers greater than ten and then added

the two smaller number together, then added that number to ten, she had a little trouble

grasping that lesson so her teacher split it up into two parts and we went over the first

part together.

I would say that Allies math ability is the same as most children in the first grade

at this point. She has learned to add well enough for her age group and will be taking

timed adding tests soon, as well as working some more on subtraction. Her counting and

number writing skills had also greatly improved throughout the time we spent practicing.

Although her attention span for sitting down was low, and she was easily distracted, but

at that age it is expected. There were only a few moments when she totally refused to

cooperate. Over all it was dealing with a typical first grade math student in a tutoring

environment.