Pam Miller TPA EC Task 1 12/15/13 1. Central Focus a. The subject of this learning segment is mathematics.

. The five lessons focus on skip counting, in particular counting by 2s, 5s and 10s. b. The standards and learning objectives of this learning segment promote active and multimodal learning in that manipulatives and real world items are used to teach skip counting. Students also solve story problems that involve concrete examples. In addition, this learning segment provides opportunities for students to practice words and phrases specific to this math as well as academic language used in the other content areas. Students will also have the opportunity to practice skip counting through reading and writing poetry. c. The lessons build on previous learning about skip counting. This segment provides opportunities for students to think deeply about the purpose of skip counting and grouping. These activities include counting classroom materials and objects, playing a game with a partner, and writing poems with a specific number of syllables. Working with partners or in small groups helps students develop oral language skills. They will be talking to one another about the math task which will provide opportunities to use academic language structures and vocabulary. As students think about their strategies for solving problems and noticing patterns, they will be writing these thoughts down as well as sharing them with the whole class. This promotes development of oral language and writing skills. d. Several supports will create a positive learning environment. One is the coteaching models that will be used. In this learning segment, station teaching, parallel teaching, and supplementary teaching will be used to deliver the content and to differentiate for the variety of learners. In addition, students will have the opportunity to work with a partner for several activities. During work time, students are seated at tables of 2-4 children, which encourages discussion about the tasks and provides opportunities for students to express their thoughts and strategies out loud. Also, several of the problems that students face involve themselves and objects from the classroom. This provides real-world and familiar contexts for the mathematical concepts that students are learning. 2. Knowledge of Children to Inform Teaching a. Development i. Social and Emotional Second graders (7-8 years old) require many opportunities to develop social and emotional skills. In this stage of

development, children are faced with the problem of either being industrious or inferior. Primary teachers must support students so that they can be successful in ways that are neither frustrating nor too easy. One way that students test their place in the world is by comparing themselves to their peers. This is a natural part of education. However, it is the teachers job to try to minimize competition so that other aspects of school and learning are highlighted, such as individual and classroom achievements. Another important aspect of primary students is that they need safe and secure relationships with adults. Teachers of primary students need to be warm and project a sense of openness and availability to students needs. Predictable schedules and routines also help establish a feeling of safety and security in the classroom. Primary students also need ample opportunity to practice social skills, such as solving social conflict and working toward a common goal in a group. ii. Cognitive and Physical Students at this age are making the transition from preoperational thinking to concrete operational thinking and developing the ability to think abstractly. This means that they are better able to comprehend cause and effect. They can also concentrate on more than one dimension of a task or a problem at a time. Second graders are able to understand that operations are reversible. This skill is particularly important as students are learning about the relationship between addition and subtraction and other mathematical concepts. Primary students are also developing the ability to take a perspective other than their own. These students are able to manipulate symbols, which is an important skill for literacy as well as mathematics. Another important skill arising from this shift in development is metacognition. Developing the ability to think about ones thinking is significant, especially in mathematics, because explaining how a problem is solved provides more information about a students learning than the actual answer. These students are also continuing to develop executive function skills. Their attention span is increasing every year, though still not very long. Students are also better able to regulate their behavior and control their impulses than during the previous years of school. Second graders have also developed their fine and gross motor skills throughout the first two years of elementary school and have more refined motor control and agility than in early childhood. Students enjoy practicing newly developed fine motor skills through craft activities. These students also enjoy developing gross motor skills such as skipping, kicking, throwing, and other gross movements through games with peers. iii. Communicative Language Second graders are developing their vocabulary at an amazing rate. Children in this stage of life learn about 2,000-3,000 new words per year. They are vocabulary sponges, so the learning environment must be arranged to fully meet this potential. In addition to this amazing increase in vocabulary, children are learning the structure of language and the rules of grammar, especially structures used in academic language. These students need ample opportunity to practice academic vocabulary and grammatical structures in many different contexts and activities. In addition,

children are still internalizing language and developing their inner voice, so they need many opportunities to speak and process their thoughts out loud. b. Second graders have a wide variety of language and literacy skills. The average student in this class is able to write in full sentences, spell the many words correctly, and use invented spelling for larger, non-phonetic words. Reading levels vary from sounding out nearly every letter in a text to a 4th or 5th grade level of structure and complexity. About a third of the class are English Learners (EL), and all but one of these ELs receive ESL services. Within this group there is a wide diversity of language and literacy skills. Most of these students are able to understand oral English and can easily communicate with peers and teachers in English. There are two students with limited oral English skills who often have difficulty following the lesson or understanding what to do when oral directions are given. Among the students with proficient social English skills, four are below grade level in reading and writing. The remaining ELs (three) are at or above grade level in reading and writing skills. With this wide variety of ability, this group of students needs support in comprehending and using academic language, especially oral and written grammar structures that are not used in social communication. The entire class also has several students who read and write below grade level. In math, these students struggle with comprehending written instructions on assignments and worksheets. Typically, these students are able to meet the demands of writing in math by writing in words and phrases only, not full sentences. These students receive individual and small group reading interventions from the schools reading specialist and members of Minnesota Reading Corps. The students with language and literacy skills above grade level are able to write in complete sentences, spell nearly every word correctly, and rarely use invented spelling. These students frequently use sophisticated grammar structures and vocabulary when writing and speaking. The two students with IEPs also struggle with tasks that require reading and writing at a second grade level. Like the other students reading below grade level, written directions are difficult as are writing tasks. 3. Supporting Childrens Development and Learning a. Skip counting and grouping are developmentally appropriate concepts to be teaching second graders, because they require both concrete and abstract thinking. Skip counting is concrete in that there are predictable and observable patterns. Skip counting and grouping are abstract in that they require manipulation of numbers and thinking about many objects as one group. These concepts are also important for building a foundation for multiplication and division later in the school year and in subsequent grade levels. Haiku is also developmentally appropriate, because it requires manipulation of language (separation of syllables) within a precise structure. This age group is able to manipulate alphabetic symbols for reading, but they are still developing deep manipulation and understanding of words, sounds, grammatical structures and spelling. Another reason that haiku is included in this math learning segment is because of the focus

on counting and grouping when writing this style of poetry. Materials were chosen because they are concrete and real-world objects, for example, legs and fingers in our class and chairs in our classroom. In addition, counting the value of coins naturally lends itself to skip counting. Focusing on the value of coins is also appropriate for this age, because they are developing the flexibility to think about an object (coin) as having more or less value than another object. b. Several instructional strategies and supports were planned for this learning segment to best serve this diverse group of learners. For each lesson, individual work will be differentiated. Extra worksheets and activities will be created for gifted students. For one of the student on an IEP, the amount of work will be decreased and the numbers of the story problems were modified. This will allow that student to develop the skills in the learning segment while being able to feel successful at task. The game that students play in the third lesson will be introduced using a parallel co-teaching model. This was planned so that teachers could better model the steps of the game and so that students will be able to observe the explanations and directions more closely. In a small group, students can ask questions and teachers are better able to gauge whether or not objectives are being met. Stations will be used so that students can get more and individual support on specific activities. This also allows teachers to take the time to focus on individuals and provide more language and concept support and guidance. Supplemental teaching is planned for the final lesson for ELs and the student on an IEP, so that the concept and language objectives can be reinforced. Pairs and groups will be chosen so that ELs work with native English speakers and so that struggling students work with students who easily grasp mathematical concepts. Groupings such as these reinforce students understanding of the concepts and provide opportunities to develop perspective taking and social skills. c. One common developmental misunderstanding is the value of coins. Students are able to cognitively understand that different coins have different values, but memorizing which coin is what value is difficult for some students. In addition, the shape and size of American coins do not indicate their relative values, so memorization can be difficult. To address this misunderstanding, students will spend time observing the similarities and differences between coins and work together to make a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting the qualities of common coins (penny, nickel, dime, and quarter). A common developmental approximation is syllable separation. Breaking apart words into meaningless sections requires a certain amount of cognitive flexibility, which many students this age are still developing. One instructional strategy for separating syllables is to clap as each syllable is spoken out loud. Coordinating hand claps while mentally manipulating words requires several cognitive skills at work at once. To address this approximation, students will be using their own names, because they are familiar and meaningful. Students will also be practicing syllable separation several times during the learning segment. Another developmental approximation is counting objects one at a time. Many second graders, including students in this class approach counting and arithmetic problems in this way. The central focus of

this learning segment helps students develop flexibility with and manipulation of numbers. The five lessons also provide opportunities for students to observe and think about skip counting and grouping so that they can move past from counting objects one at a time. 4. Supporting Childrens Language Development a. There are four main language skills that will support students learning in this learning experience. The first is the vocabulary words haiku and syllable. Along with the use and meaning of these words is the skill of syllable separation and identifying how many syllables are in a word. Other vocabulary words include the names of common coins: penny, nickel, dime and quarter. The next form is comparative and superlative adjectives, such as fast, faster, fasted and good, better, best. The final skill is the proper use of certain adjectives, such as alike, same and different. b. Instructional supports that help students develop the vocabulary and skills mentioned above include immediate feedback, modeling, and repetition. As a whole class, we will take turns clapping and counting the number of syllables in our first and last names. If students miscount or clap incorrectly, I will help them do it again correctly. This will also be done as students write their own haiku. I will ask them to modify their writing if their poem does not match the structure of haiku. When comparing and contrasting coins, I will model the sentence format that I want students to use. During this section of the lesson, I will also encourage students to rephrase their responses in complete sentences and use the sentence format that I modeled for them. Students will also have many opportunities to repeat and practice using coin names. While playing a game with coins, students will be talking with their partner about which coins to use and how coins can be exchanged based on their value. 5. Monitoring Childrens Learning Informal assessments include observations during group discussions and work time. I will make notes of students who do and do not meet objectives based on their responses in the large group and their ability to complete the work during individual and small group work time. In addition, students will be assessed individually on their knowledge of coin names and values. Real coins will be used for this assessment, so that students are able to closely examine and manipulate the coins. This assessment will be done outside of the math lessons and data will be compiled using a checklist. Three of the five lessons include individual worksheets of story problems related to the central focus. As part of these worksheets, students will be required to draw a diagram of how they reached the solution as well as write words describing their strategy. This allows students to use words and pictures to explain their thinking. Separating and counting syllables orally and writing haiku will be used to assess syllable separation.