Achievements and Challenges
Unit 4: My students liked the bar graphs. All of my students could answer questions based on the information the graph showed. The hardest part for them is making the bar graph and making sure all the necessary parts are included.
Looking ahead in Unit 4: Pictographs will be a little harder for my students to interpret. They will need to use the key to found out how much each picture is worth and that is another step they will have to remember.
Unit 4: My students liked the Guess My Rule game and I had them moving to sides of the room (East and West) if they followed the rule/didn't. It transferred nicely to representing data.
Looking ahead in Unit 4- the first investigation is mostly using bar graphs and pictographs to represent data. I found resources on the N:Drive- Unit 4-Rich Tasks- I also looked at summative and noticed that students need to be able to make and label a bar graph.
Unit 3
Investigation 1
Session 1.2 Number Strings (Challenge)
This was a tough concept for students to grasp. Had to spend multiple days on this lesson, and continued to practice throughout the unit. Emphasis on encouraging students to find combinations that make 10, addition doubles, and near-doubles, when solving number strings. For struggling students, we used manipulatives (connecting cubes).
Session 1.4 Close to 20 (Achievement)
Students mastered this game in a short amount of time. They were able to use their mathematical reasoning to think critically about the numbers they were working with. It increased their number sense, and is an easily differentiated game.
Investigation 2
Session 2.4 Problems with Unknown Change (Challenge)
Students were able to solve addition and subtraction story problems to find a sum or difference, but found difficulty in solving when there was a missing addend. They seemed to rely heavily on drawing pictures to solve. For struggling students, we again used manipulatives and the 100's chart.
Session 2.6 Story Problems (Achievement)
In this session, students were able to use creativity to make up their own story problems to match an expression. They enjoyed this, and even extended the activity by continuing to make expressions and switching with a buddy to write a story problem.
Investigation 3
Mid-Unit Assessment: Even or Odd
Most students were able to correctly identify if a number was even or odd. However, when they were asked to explain WHY it was even or odd, they struggled with explaining correctly. We were looking for answers like "It is even because you could divide it equally into 2 teams, and there would not be any leftovers." Instead, we got answers like "It is odd because you don't say it when you count by 2's." Conceptually, we would like our students to be thinking deeper about this concept. ***As a goal for the remaining units, we would like to focus some attention on writing to explain our answers.***
Session 3.4 How many Fingers? (Challenge)
This session was a bit of a challenge because it urges the students to think abstractly. There were multiple strategies that could have been used to solve these problems (counting by 5's or 10's), but it was difficult for them to group them accordingly and solve the corresponding word problem. For struggling students, we used a real life model by counting all of the fingers in the class using our own hands.
Session 3.1 Partners and Teams (Achievement)
Students were able to successfully divide connecting cubes into teams, and visually represent even and odd numbers. Dividing groups into partners seemed to be easier than dividing into teams.
Investigation 4
Session 4.3 Adding 10 (Achievement)
Students were able to use the 100's chart to notice the patterns that the plus 10 combinations offer. They were able to use proficient math vocabulary to describe that the number in the ones place stayed the same and the number in the tens place increased by 1. Students brought further enrichment to the group (without prompting) by suggestion that minus 10 combinations would have a similar pattern - that the number in the ones place would stay the same and the number in the tens place would decrease by 1.
Equivalent Equations (Achievement)
ReplyDeleteUsing coins to demonstrate the meaning of equivalent was very helpful when then having to move to equivalent equations. My students used two dice to make a two digit number and then they had to make that same amount a different way then their partner. (Good coin trading practice as well !)
Telling Time Reinforcement (Achievement)
ReplyDelete"What time is it?" game
After teaching telling time I play this game with my class. I spontaneously ask the group what time it is several times a day. If the selected person gets it right they earn a reward. The kids love it and I find they actually practice more at home with their parents in case they are the next one picked. It doesn't take a lot of time, helps break up the day, and serves as a good spiral review for the remainder of the year.
Unit 4 assessment - challenges
ReplyDeleteFormat of the graph- students struggled with the amount of empty space, and adding accurate titles
Vocabulary- comparison, needed review prior to the assessment
Language use in the questions- many of my students put names instead of numbers for the questions in #2
Unit 5- Math (challenges)
ReplyDeleteneed more practice with alternating patterns, investigations only uses skip counting patterns to complete the tables
language vague on part 2 of question # 1 -money question involving accumulating days was difficult to interpret,. some students identified the amount only for the 8th day instead of the accumulated total. (again they need exposure to this type of question ahead of time)
Scoring was a challenge when trying to indicate what would earn a 4.
"Responses will vary" can be subjective.
Accomplishments-
ReplyDeleteUsing the idea of doubles really helped my students when associating rows on their tables. (2, 4 & 5,10 etc.)
ELA-
ReplyDeleteStatue of Liberty -Module 3 &4 Assessment
Readability was challenging.
The box with the P 3 in it not something they would typically see in non-fiction text.
Scoring-
Is use of pronouns appropriate in their answers for the constructed responses.
#7-no reference to the Statue of Liberty in the question.
#8-does refer to the Statue of Liberty
Informational Writing Assessment
ReplyDelete(Challenges)
Concerns over time allotments for each day and inability to use resources/organizers they are accustomed to using.
(Achievements)
Had some success with organizing notes by teaching the students to fold their planning pages into quarters for potential headings on the assessment.
Datacation- (Challenges)
ReplyDeleteStill having trouble with scanning the data into the system. I had to manually input some of my students ID numbers again and I had to manually input all of my handwritten scores because they seemed to be given arbitrary numbers.