PACT - Planning Commentary

1. What is the central focus of the learning segment? Apart from being present in the school curriculum, student academic content standards, or ELD standards, why is the content of the learning segment important for your particular students to learn? (TPE 1) Although there were many learning goals for this mathematics learning sequence, the central focus was to introduce students to a series of mathematical practices required by the common core standards, including making sense of problems and persevering in solving them, reasoning abstractly and quantitatively, and attending to precision. Although I wanted the students to become familiar with geometric shapes, I also wanted the students to practice solving problems that had multiple solutions, to practice discussing and critiquing strategies of their peers, and to show precision and neatness in their final work. Each of these skills is a mathematical practice standard in the new common core standards, and although the students will not be evaluated by these standards for another one or two more years, I wanted to introduce them to these standards so that the transition process would seem less shocking and overwhelming for them when the transition inevitably comes. In addition to these central focuses of the geometry sequence that I taught, there were some other California content standards that I wanted the students to become familiar with during the lesson sequence. First, I wanted the students to be able to identify attributes of triangles. This means that I wanted the students to be able to tell the difference between an isosceles triangle (with two equal sides and angles), an equilateral triangle (with three equal sides and angles), and a scalene triangle (with no equal sides or angles). I also wanted the students to be able to be able to identify the triangles by the degree of their angle (right triangle, obtuse triangle, and acute triangle). Lastly, I wanted to introduce the students to the vocabulary names of the triangles (sides for the shorter sides of the triangle, and hypotenuse for the longer sides of the triangle). These classifications and vocabulary terms are outlined in the California Content Standards under Measurement and Geometry 2.2: Identify the attributes of triangles (e.g., two equal sides for the isosceles triangle, three equal sides for the equilateral triangle, right angle for the right triangle). A third focus of this lesson sequence was the development of spatial sense, which can be defined as having an intuition about shapes and knowing the relationships among shapes. Spatial sense also includes the ability of an individual to mentally visualize different objects and special relationships, allowing him or her to turn things over and around in his or her mind. Spatial sense allows students to recognize and appreciate geometric forms in places like architecture, art, and even nature. It also allows students to use geometric ideas to analyze and describe the world around them. The last focus of the geometry lesson sequence that I wanted the students to be able to show was an explanation of mathematical reasoning, as required by the California Content Standards. The content standards state that students should make informed decisions about how to approach problems, and should analyze problems by identifying relationships, distinguishing relevant from irrelevant information, sequencing and prioritizing information, and observing patterns. By putting the students in situations where they were given an open ended problem with gentle guidance and restrictions, allowing them to work together in groups to make quantitative, concrete, and abstract reasoning observations, and evaluating

and assessing them on the number of different creative answers that they gave to a complex problem, the students were thoroughly introduced to many of these mathematics standards. 2. Briefly describe the theoretical framework and/or research that inform your instructional design for developing your students knowledge and abilities in both mathematics and academic language during the learning segment. The mathematical research that I used to inform my instructional design and design my lesson sequence came from the mathematics educators John VandeWalle, Karen Karp, and Jennifer Bay-Williams in the book Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally. In this text, the authors describe the importance of mathematics students practicing and becoming familiar with visualizing when dealing with geometric concepts. The authors also explain the advantages for mathematics students to develop spatial sense, because it allows the students to appreciate geometric forms in art, nature, and architecture. It also allows them to use geometric ideas to describe and analyze their world. (VandeWall 2010). The process of visualizing shapes, which includes creating mental images of shapes and then turning them around mentally, allows the students to think about them from different prospectives and allows the students to become better at predicting results of various transformations (VandeWall 2010). The authors go on to explain that when students are dealing with geometric concepts, especially when they are manipulating, adjusting, and changing the geometric figures, having the ability to visualize the figures and manipulate the shapes in their minds allows the students to become better at many of the tasks required by the standards including reasoning with shapes and attributes, looking for and making use of structure, analyzing problems by identifying relationships, and observing patterns. In this learning segment, students were required to spend time developing their spatial sense and practice manipulating and adjusting geometric figures. Students had the triangles as manipulative tools to help them with these visualizations. The research that I used to help students with academic language, including the different classifications of the triangles (right, acute, obtuse, isosceles, equilateral, scalene) and the vocabulary words (side, hypotenuse), influenced me to make sure that I had visual models of each triangle or triangle part up on the board. The research came from a text by Tarquin and Walker titled Creating Success in the Classroom: Visual Organizers and How to Use Them. The authors of the text explained that in all academic subjects, using visuals to aid instructions helps students absorb definitions and concepts. Using models as examples to help students classify shapes (in this case, the different triangles) allows the students to have a better idea of what the academic language vocabulary words visually represent. 3. How do key learning tasks in your plans build on each other to support students development of conceptual understanding, computational/procedural fluency, mathematical reasoning skills, and related academic language? Describe specific strategies that you will use to build student learning across the learning segment. Reference the instructional materials you have included, as needed. (TPEs 1, 4, 9) The lessons into this geometry unit that I am teaching support the development of student conceptual understanding, mathematical reasoning skills, academic language, and visualization of geometric figures through the usage of physical models, sentence frame worksheets, instruction with echo talk, group collaboration, use of manipulatives, and an

assessment guided by a rubric. The lessons in this geometry lesson sequence build on each other by using the mathematical concepts, vocabulary, and models to deepen conceptual understanding with each lesson. This first lesson introduces the idea of triangle classification. The first key learning task that I want to introduce to my students is the development of an ability to classify geometric objects based on their structure. In this particular case, students will be expected to group triangles into different classes based on their shape specifically their angles and sides. Upon receiving further instruction, including an introduction to vocabulary terms, the students will also be expected to name each group of triangles by the proper classifying name (equilateral, isosceles, scalene; or acute, right, or obtuse). This first lesson allows the students the opportunity to identify the attributes of triangles, and become familiar with the group sorting at their own pace. It also provides the students with the opportunity to conduct their own mathematical reasoning, as they must make their own decisions about how to approach the sorting problem. This lesson is designed to have more than one correct way of sorting the triangles, so all of the student reasoning does not have to be uniform. Although this lesson does leave room for the students to show some creativity when sorting the triangles, which helps them develop some conceptual understanding, it also helps the students develop related academic language by having the students match the proper vocabulary term (isosceles triangle group, scalene triangle group, equilateral triangle group, etc.) with the appropriate assorted group of triangles. The second lesson is designed to build off of this foundational knowledge of triangle classifications that the students become familiar with. The previous lesson required the students to complete an activity that introduced them to the names of different triangles based on classifications of the shape, side lengths, and angle measurements. In this second lesson, the students will be required to identify the type of triangle that is used as the building block for the activity. (The triangle used is a right-isosceles triangle, but the students have to figure that out on their own.) In the second lesson, students will be more successful in their assignment (building unique figures out of triangles given certain restrictions) if they recall the properties of rightisosceles triangles. Since the students will have recently completed the Lesson #1 activity that required them to sort the triangles and helped them match the triangle groups with vocabulary terms/names, the students should have a solid foundational knowledge of triangle properties to complete the activity. I will use the document camera to create visuals that will build student learning across this learning sequence. These will include visuals of the right-isosceles triangles that will be used as the building blocks in the activity. Without knowledge of the properties and makeup of the triangles, the activity would be much more difficult to complete. The third lesson is directly related to the second lesson because students are required to collectively find out how many unique figures can possibly be created from the four rightisosceles triangles given the restrictions. The students are required to use both their knowledge of the properties of right-isosceles triangles that they developed in Lesson #1 and their problem sense and abstract and quantitative reasoning that they developed and practiced in Lesson #2. In this third lesson, I used the strategy of posting the figures up on the board so that the students had the opportunity to visually and mentally rotate, flip, and adjust the figures to

find new ones. I also used the strategy of having student-volunteers come to the front of the classroom to explain their thinking and explain strategies that they had used in Lesson #2 to find new unique figures. 4. Given the description of students that you provided in Task 1: Context for Learning, how do your choices of instructional strategies, materials, technology, and the sequence of learning tasks reflect your students backgrounds, interests, and needs? Be specific about how your knowledge of your students informed the lesson plans, such as the choice of text or materials used in lessons, how groups were formed or structured, using student learning or experiences (in or out of school) as a resource, or structuring new or deeper learning to take advantage of specific student strengths. (TPEs 4,6,7,8,9) Because so many of my students are classified as Gifted and Talented (G.A.T.E.), I want to design the lessons to allow the students to make discoveries, compare their strategies with each other, critique each others strategies, and complete self reflection exercises and rubrics. In Lesson #1, the students will be given the flexibility to organize the triangles into whatever groups that they could come up with, and they were encouraged to critique each others placement of triangles into certain groups. They will also be given the flexibility to organize triangles by angle (right triangle, obtuse triangle, or acute triangle group) or by side length (equilateral triangle, isosceles triangle, or scalene triangle group). In Lesson #2, I will give the students the opportunity to complete a task that required abstract, quantitative, and creative thinking with shapes and their attributes, which are listed under the 3rd grade common core standards and the G.A.T.E. guidelines. This activity also requires them to complete a self assessment rubric and challenges them to exercise their quantitative and self-reflective skills. Many of these required tasks reflect the G.A.T.E. students abilities to reason quantitatively and self-reflect. In Lesson #3, I will give the students the task of posting each of their unique figures onto the board and attempting to collectively find all of the possible unique figures given the guidelines and restrictions. This whole-class activity will require the students to propose ideas and strategies, critique others reasoning, work collaboratively, observe patterns, and explain thinking. These requirements all will be given with the goal of challenging the G.A.T.E. students thinking. Although many of the lesson goals will be tailored towards the G.A.T.E. students, there will be other students in the class that had other needs that needed to be met. These students include a boy who is emotionally disturbed, a girl with dyslexia who has trouble reading, a boy with autism, and a girl with speech difficulties. I will adjust Lesson #1 a few ways to help these students with special needs. I will isolate the emotionally disturbed student from others and gave him his own set of triangles and set of guiding questions to avoid confrontations with other students. I will personally model the activity for the girl with dyslexia, and pair her up with another high achieving student who often works well mentoring other students. For the student with autism, I will simplify the task by giving him a visual aid large paper with three circles on it. Then I will have him choose one triangle at a time to place in one of the three circles. This scaffold is designed to guide him in his grouping strategies. Lastly, for the girl with speech difficulties, I will allow her to draw pictures to help aid her in her explanations for the different groups that she categorizes the triangles into.

I will adjust Lesson #2 in similar ways. I again will isolate the emotionally disturbed boy from other students who might trigger his confrontational habits, and give him a set of guiding questions to work on as he works on making unique figures as part of the triangle problem. I again will spend a few minutes modeling the activity for the girl with dyslexia, will allow her to ask me any specific questions about the activity, and again will pair her up with another high-achieving student that I know can provide assistance for her. For the student with autism, I again will simplify the activity by joining some of the triangles together by their hypotenuses, making it easier to construct unique figures. Lastly, for the girl with speech difficulties, I will give her paper and allow her to draw pictures of figures or write down her reasoning to help aid her as she explains her strategies and defends her reasoning. Lesson #3 involves a collaboration effort from the entire class. This means that I have to adjust my special treatment to the students with specific needs. Because the lesson depends on collaboration, I have to think of a new way of incorporating the emotionally disturbed boy into the class. I will use him as a model and ask him to present some of his findings of unique figures to the rest of the class. This will give him the attention he craves without forcing him to interact with other students (which might set him off into a fit of violence). Next, I will have the boy with autism present his figures to the rest of the class. I purposely will have this autistic boy present early on in the lesson so that other students, particularly the G.A.T.E. students, will have an opportunity to (politely and sensitively) critique his work and add their own findings to it. For the student with dyslexia, I will have her present her unique-figure findings with a partner before bringing her figures up to the board and presenting them to the rest of the class. When it is time for the girl with speech difficulties to share her unique figures and her strategies for finding the figures, I will have her put the captioned illustrations (that she created in Lesson #2) under the document camera to help aid her in her presentation. This way, even if she has difficulty with her public speaking, the other students will have a way of following her reasoning and strategies. All of these students have different needs, and I will make as many adjustments as I can to keep them involved and engaged in the lessons. 5. Consider the language demands of the oral and written tasks in which you plan to have students engage as well as the various levels of English language proficiency related to classroom tasks as described in the Context Commentary. (TPE 7) a. Identify words and phrases (if appropriate) that you will emphasize in this learning segment. Why are these important for students to understand and use in completing classroom tasks in the learning segment? Which students? I will have the students use vocabulary words that describe the parts of the triangle (side, hypotenuse, angle, etc.) and vocabulary words that describe the different classifications of triangles (equilateral, isosceles, scalene, obtuse, right, acute, etc). If possible, I want all the students, especially the three redesignated English Language Learners, to use these words in dialogue when describing triangles. I will use sentence frames as scaffolds to help these students use these words in complete, grammatically correct sentences, as needed. One of the reasons that it is important for me to emphasize this use of vocabulary in complete sentences in Lesson #1 is because the students will be expected to use the vocabulary words when explaining and critiquing their reasoning to their peers during the

activities to be completed in the other two lessons in the learning segment. Using these vocabulary words will make it easier for the students to accurately and efficiently explain their thoughts and ideas. b. What oral and/or written academic language (organizational, stylistic, and/or grammatical features) will you teach and/or reinforce? Within the lesson, I will teach the students the correct grammatical ways of describing the different features and categories of triangles. I will also show the students that using these vocabulary names can be used as an organizational academic language tool, which can help the students to sort the different triangles into categories. This academic language will be oral (in pair-shares, table talks, full class discussions, and presentations) and written (using sentence frames for support). c. Explain how specific features of the learning and assessment tasks in your plan, including your own use of language, support students in learning to understand and use these words, phrases (if appropriate), and academic language. How does this build on what your students are currently able to do and increase their abilities to follow and/or use different types of text and oral formats? During Lesson #1, I will use echo-talk with triangle-specific vocabulary words to help introduce the students to important academic language. This echo-talk, combined with visuals, are strategies that will hopefully help students associate certain titles that describe the categories of triangles they sorted. For students that need further assistance, I will distribute sentence frame aids, which I can collect to assess how well the students use the academic language in grammatically correct, complete sentences. Using the sentence frames will build on something that the students will already have been introduced to pairing groups of triangles with vocabulary names (academic language). To gauge the students use of academic language involving the triangle vocabulary words, I will also use an exit slip assessment near the end of Lesson #1. This assessment exit slip will require students to match the appropriate academic language (i.e. isosceles triangle) with the corresponding image. This exit slip will help me assess how well the students recognize the academic language they were introduced to during the lesson. This assessment will build off of what the students already have been introduced to (categories of triangles, and names describing those categories) and will ideally allow them to demonstrate an understanding of the connection between the categories and the names. 6. Explain how the collection of assessments from your plan allows you to evaluate your students learning of specific student standards/objectives and provide feedback to students on their learning. (TPEs 2, 3) The first assessment, the exit slip from Lesson #1, is a quick, straight forward quiz that assesses the students knowledge of academic language (triangle vocabulary). This assessment allows me to evaluate how well the students recognize the different triangle groups, and whether the students can associate the particular groups with names. The feedback provided by this assessment formally acknowledges the students understanding of

the names of the different triangle categories. Admittedly, the only feedback that this assessment provides is that formal acknowledgement. The second assessment from Lesson #2, which includes both the triangle problem work (the pasted unique figures on construction paper) and the self-assessment rubric that helps score the project, is much more serious and provides deeper insight into student understanding with regards to the activity. The collection of the triangle problem work allows me to evaluate the students level of creative, abstract, and quantitative reasoning with shapes and their attributes, which are common core learning objectives of the lesson. It also allows me to evaluate neatness and attentiveness to precision, another common core standard that this problem challenges the students to demonstrate. Most importantly, the rubric section of the assessment from Lesson #2 allows the students to self-assess their own work. Having the students self-assess helps them give themselves valuable feedback, something that they will need to do in their projects and assignments all throughout their lives. Lastly, I will also fill out a rubric for each of the students projects evaluating their conceptual and critical thinking skills, and their attention to neatness and detail. This feedback will help the students understand the multiple ways that their work can be evaluated. 7. Describe any teaching strategies you have planned for your students who have identified educational needs (e.g., English learners, GATE students, students with IEPs). Explain how these features of your learning and assessment tasks will provide students access to the curriculum and allow them to demonstrate their learning. (TPEs 9. 12) I have several teaching strategies planned for my students with identified educational needs, including G.A.T.E. students, a student with dyslexia, a student who is emotionally disturbed, a student with autism, and student with difficulties with speech, and with students who are English Language Learners. Because so many of my students are classified as Gifted and Talented (G.A.T.E.), I want to design the lessons to allow the students to make discoveries, compare their strategies with each other, critique each others strategies, and complete self reflection exercises and rubrics. In Lesson #1, the students will be given the flexibility to organize the triangles into whatever groups that they could come up with, and they were encouraged to critique each others placement of triangles into certain groups. They will also be given the flexibility to organize triangles by angle (right triangle, obtuse triangle, or acute triangle group) or by side length (equilateral triangle, isosceles triangle, or scalene triangle group). In Lesson #2, I will give the students the opportunity to complete a task that required abstract, quantitative, and creative thinking with shapes and their attributes, which are listed under the 3rd grade common core standards and the G.A.T.E. guidelines. This activity also requires them to complete a self assessment rubric and challenges them to exercise their quantitative and self-reflective skills. Many of these required tasks reflect the G.A.T.E. students abilities to reason quantitatively and self-reflect. In Lesson #3, I will give the students the task of posting each of their unique figures onto the board and attempting to collectively find all of the possible unique figures given the guidelines and restrictions. This whole-class activity will require the students to propose ideas and strategies, critique others reasoning, work collaboratively, observe patterns, and explain thinking. These requirements all will be given with the goal of challenging the G.A.T.E. students thinking.

Although many of the lesson goals will be tailored towards the G.A.T.E. students, there will be other students in the class that had other needs that needed to be met. These students include English Language learners (although some of them have been reclassified), a boy who is emotionally disturbed, a girl with dyslexia who has trouble reading, a boy with autism, and a girl with speech difficulties. To help the English Language learners in the classroom achieve the language objectives (using vocabulary words that help describe the triangles in their language when they are completing the triangle problem), I will introduce the vocabulary words to the students, and then have them practice these vocabulary words with sentence frames. The sentence frames will serve as a scaffold to help the students use the words in sentences that are grammatically correct and relevant to the problem at hand (finding unique figures in the triangle problem). I will adjust Lesson #1 a few ways to help these students with special needs. I will isolate the emotionally disturbed student from others and gave him his own set of triangles and set of guiding questions to avoid confrontations with other students. I will personally model the activity for the girl with dyslexia, and pair her up with another high achieving student who often works well mentoring other students. For the student with autism, I will simplify the task by giving him a visual aid large paper with three circles on it. Then I will have him choose one circle at a time to place in one of the three circles. This scaffold is designed to guide him in his grouping strategies. Lastly, for the girl with speech difficulties, I will allow her to draw pictures to help aid her in her explanations for the different groups that she categorizes the triangles into. I will adjust Lesson #2 in similar ways. I again will isolate the emotionally disturbed boy from other students who might trigger his confrontational habits, and give him a set of guiding questions to work on as he works on making unique figures as part of the triangle problem. I again will spend a few minutes modeling the activity for the girl with dyslexia, will allow her to ask me any specific questions about the activity, and again will pair her up with another high-achieving student that I know can provide assistance for her. For the student with autism, I again will simplify the activity by joining some of the triangles together by their hypotenuses, making it easier to construct unique figures. Lastly, for the girl with speech difficulties, I will give her paper and allow her to draw pictures of figures or write down her reasoning to help aid her as she explains her strategies and defends her reasoning. Lesson #3 involves a collaboration effort from most of the class. This means that I have to adjust my special treatment to the students with specific needs. Because the lesson depends on collaboration, I have to think of a new way of incorporating the emotionally disturbed boy into the class. I will use him as a model and ask him to present some of his findings of unique figures to the rest of the class. This will give him the attention he craves without forcing him to interact with other students (which might set him off into a fit of violence). Next, I will have the boy with autism present his figures to the rest of the class. I purposely will have this autistic boy present early on in the lesson so that other students, particularly the G.A.T.E. students, will have an opportunity to (politely and sensitively) critique his work and add their own findings to it. For the student with dyslexia, I will have her present her unique-figure findings with a partner before bringing her figures up to the board and presenting them to the rest of the class. When it is time for the girl with speech difficulties to share her unique figures and her strategies for finding the figures, I will have

her put the captioned illustrations (that she created in Lesson #2) under the document camera to help aid her in her presentation. This way, even if she has difficulty with her public speaking, the other students will have a way of following her reasoning and strategies. All of these students have different needs, and I will make as many adjustments as I can to keep them involved and engaged in the lessons.