UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA

Teacher Work Sample

Algebra I: Solving Linear Equations
Emily Wilson Fall Semester 2012

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

At 7:35 a.m. on September 25, 2012 room 108, at Hellgate High School, began to fill with ten anxious University of Montana students. Today was the day we had been anticipating for the past week. We had prepared and perfected our lesson plans, discussed in detail how the first few days would commence, and spent the morning getting ready to look our teacher-best. It was here, we were now responsible for teaching the students of Mr. Hays first period Algebra I class all there is to know about Chapter 3: Solving Linear Equations. On a busy street corner in Missoula, MT Hellgate High School has 1,272 students enrolled in grades nine through twelve. Over ninety percent of the students here are Caucasian, five percent are American Indian, and about two percent of the school is made up of other various ethnicities. On the first floor of the enormous school is room 108. For six out of the seven periods a day, five days a week, room 108 is packed full of students receiving their daily dose of mathematics. Jeff Hays, Mr. Hays to the students, has been teaching math in this classroom for the past three years. This year, his first period Algebra I class contains thirty students, fifteen are girls and fifteen are boys. The Algebra I students poured into the classroom early on this Tuesday morning each one eying the group of us University students as they find their seat. Mr. Hays began this day by going over a test the students took the Friday before a long weekend. After going over the test, Mr. Hays introduced us as future teachers who would be in charge for the next two weeks. He asked the students to show us the same respect they show him, and to come to us with any questions they may have over this short period of time. The class is now ours. We organized our time at Hellgate into nine co-taught lessons, one pretest, two quizzes, and one posttest. Each University student has been assigned to three Algebra I students. We are to focus on these three students when working in small groups, grading homework, and other

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

classroom activities. It is our job to be sure our three students are learning the material and we are to watch closely to observe how they are progressing during our time teaching. The three students I have been assigned are Michelle, Harvey, and Samantha. I co-taught two lesson plans over the course of two weeks. First I co-taught Section 3.6: Solve Proportions Using Cross Products, then Section 3.8: Rewrite Equations and Formulas. Copies of these lesson plans can be found in Appendix A. In both lessons the objectives are closely tied to the Montana Common Core Standards for Mathematics. We first wrote out lesson plans based on the section of the students book, then tied what we would be teaching to the standards. In my first lesson plan students will learn the extremely useful technique of Cross Products to solve proportions, and in my second lesson students will learn about function form and how to solve for a specific variable. Both of my lesson plans focus on students being able to transfer these skills into story problems. The circumstances of teaching these two lessons provided for some specific challenges. The mere fact that this was not my classroom and the students did not yet know me caused a barrier they didnt have with Mr. Hays. Having at twelve pairs of teacher eyes in the classroom was sure to make the students feel a bit uneasy, so it was our job from the start to make them feel comfortable and convey that we were there to help. Another challenge in this classroom was the use of the InterWrite Board. Mr. Hays uses this tool exclusively to teach his daily lessons. Each of us had a short crash course in how to use the board to the best of our ability. Co-teaching also provided for some challenges in teaching our lesson plans. Each set of teachers had their own dynamics, schedules, and teaching philosophies. For some groups working together was an excellent tool, for others it was more of a struggle.

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

When planning my lesson plans, and before entering this classroom I was hoping to implement interactive work where the students were discovering and working on their own both individually and in small groups. Many of us discussed using whiteboards in our lesson plans along with lecturing from either the whiteboard or the InterWrite Board. Our first order of business is to give the students a pretest. The teachers who co-taught on this first day were sure to clarify that this test would have no impact on the students grade and was simply a tool for us to see how much they already knew. This short quiz was a group effort, with each of us contributing one or two questions from the sections we were assigned to teach. Grading the pretest showed us that the class average was 4.5 out of 11 or 40.9%. The grades on the pretest ranged from 1.2% to 90.9%. My three students had an average of 36.3% or four correct answers out of eleven; see Appendix B for these tests. Michelle scored the highest in my group with a 63.6%. The results from this test showed me that many of the students struggled with solving multi-step equations and story problems. While several students gave an attempt for each question, some students such as Harvey and Samantha skipped over the problems completely. For my two particular lessons I knew I had a lot of teaching to do after looking at the pretest. All three of my students struggled with the two questions, 11 and 12, from section 3.8. None of them used the Cross Product Property, presumably because they hadnt been taught it yet, and no one solved the story problem from section 3.6, number 8, correctly. I was not shocked by these results, in fact it was what I had expected. In my case the pretest itself did not have a large impact on the lesson I had been planning to teach. I had assumed from the beginning that students would not have previously learned these

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

topics and I would be teaching them from scratch. Instead, what impacted how I modified both of my lessons was observing the groups who taught ahead of me. Originally my co-teacher and I had planned to teach the section on Cross Products in a two day lesson where the first day consisted of a lecture and some practice using the Cross Product Property and the second day we had planned to be an interactive activity using similar triangles. After observing the first five lessons being taught, it was clear to both of us that we needed to slow the pace of our lesson. So far, the groups had not been able to allow time for students to work on homework during class. This was causing some students to forget to write down the homework all together and others to get stuck and easily frustrated on the homework. My co-teacher and I decided one of our main goals was to allow students time to work on homework both days. We had also observed that all students struggled with story problems, which was expected. Changing our lesson so that the first day focused on using the Cross Product Property to solve proportions, and the second day focused on story problems involving proportions allowed students to become familiar with using the Cross Product Property. The second day we created a Story Problem Worksheet, see Section 3.6 lesson plan in Appendix A, which was a success. Almost everyone in the class received a five out of five on this homework assignment. Allowing students time in class to work on their homework gave all of the teachers an opportunity to work with students on material that had just been taught, and all of the students were thankful for the time to get homework done. We also focused part of this lesson on checking answers by plugging the answer back into the original equation. We tried to get students to do this when working on their whiteboards.

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

Section 3.8 was the last section of Chapter 3, and by the time we got to teach this lesson we were running out of time. Originally we had planned to have one day of teaching material, and one day of extension. After seeing the students skill level we realized we would most likely need two days just to cover what we had been planning in the first day. Since we were the last section and were right up against the post-test we were facing a challenge. As it turned out my co-teacher and I only had one day to teach this complicated section, so we were forced to buckle down and try to teach only the most important aspects from this section. Another challenge in teaching Section 3.8 was that we wanted to give struggling students the time to work with their individual teacher, which gave us even less time to teach. We decided that the two most important aspects of this section were writing an equation in function form, and solving a story problem when there is more than one variable involved. On this particular day we decided to do things backwards, lecturing first and going over the previous days quiz and other homework after lecture. In the end this lesson worked very well. We were able to accomplish what we needed to, and altered the post-test to eliminate a question addressing a topic we didnt have time to teach. When writing the posttest for Chapter 3, our approach was very similar to writing the pretest. Each set of teachers from each section came up with three or more questions from their section, then the group in charge of writing tests compiled these questions into one twenty question exam. Before giving the exam to the students, the ten of us took the test ourselves. We timed the duration of the exam and discussed possible changes to make. When taking the exam for the first time the majority of us felt it was too long for the students. By suggestion from our professor we estimated how long it would take the Algebra I students by multiplying our time by

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

three. For many of us in the class it took over twenty minutes to complete, which was far too long for students to complete in a fifty minute class period. After discussing possible changes of the exam, we eliminated a few repetitive questions and altered some others. We were careful to be sure we addressed each topic taught, and worked hard to tie the posttest back to the pretest. Here is an example of a pretest question and a posttest question, both relating to proportions, both testing for the same skill. Pretest:

Posttest:

On both the pretest and the posttest, these questions were testing for use of the Cross Product Property, or another method of solving proportions such as multiplying by the reciprocal. Another question from Section 3.6 which I was sure to address on both the pretest and post test was a story problem involving proportions. Pretest:

Posttest:

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

Section 3.8: Rewrite Equations and Formulas focused on two main skills, writing equations so that y is a function of x and solving equations for a given variable. The following pretest and posttest questions were chosen to address these two major topics. Pretest:

Posttest:

On the pretest, question number 11 asks students to solve for a given variable in an equation of all variables. As explained previously, my co-teacher and I had limited time to teach section 3.8 so this specific question was never addressed, and thus was eliminated from the final exam. The class average on the posttest was 81%. This is a 40.1% increase from the pretest, which shows that overall students had a much better understanding of the material than before we taught them Chapter 3. The three students I worked with during the sixteen days in room 108 were the ones I was most curious about. All three students posttests can be viewed in full in Appendix C. The following spreadsheet shows Michelle, Harvey, and Samanthas progress.

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

Pretest Raw Score (Out of 11) 7 3 2 Percent 64% 27% 18% 36%

Posttest Raw Score (Out of 100) 94 77 77 Percent 94% 77% 77% 83%

Change in Performance

Michelle Harvey Samantha Average:

30% 50% 59% 46%

As shown by the table, my three students had an average increase in performance of 46%. Samantha had the highest increase of 59%. While this table shows a generic outline of how my students progressed over this chapter, I think it is also crucial to examine how each student increased in performance by looking at specific problems from the pretest and posttest. The following are each students results from the questions relating to section 3.6. Samantha Pretest Posttest

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

Michelle Pretest Posttest

Harvey Pretest Posttest

By comparing these two questions I can tell that two of my students now understand how to use cross products. Unfortunately Harvey didnt quite grasp the concept of cross products on

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

this test, so it appears he will need further instruction and practice past chapter three. Samanthas results were interesting, because on the pretest she did a cross product but was unable to solve for the given variable. On the posttest Samantha did very well not only at writing the correct cross product, but at solving for the variable. Michelles improvement was based not on getting the correct answer but on learning to show her work. This was a constant struggle throughout this chapter, and as seen in these two problems the amount of work shown increased greatly. In section 3.6, the concept we found most crucial was writing y as a function of x. This is because the following chapter is all about graphing and using function form. We also asked a question in which students were required to solve for a given variable, then use that solution to solve a story problem. This problem was missed by several students, which I would attribute in part to us not having much time to practice this concept. This was problem 19 on the posttest, which can be viewed in more detail for each student in Appendix C. The following problems are from the pretest and posttest and test students ability to write y as a function of x.

Samantha Pretest Posttest

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

Michelle Pretest Posttest

Harvey Pretest Posttest

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

From these results it is clear that by the end of our instruction, students had a much better understanding of function form, or writing y as a function of x. When this problem was originally posed on the pretest, none of the students knew how to solve it. On the posttest each student struggled a bit to get the exact answer, but it is clear that each one knew what function form was supposed to look like. They all made an effort to solve for y, although Samantha and Harvey made some algebra errors. Comparing the posttests of these three students to their pretest, I can see that while all three of my students improved greatly from the posttest there is still work to be done regarding the topics in Chapter 3. Samantha and Harvey in particular will need more practice with their basic algebra skills, which is an easily attainable goal so long as Mr. Hays can make the time to do so. In the end it was somewhat frustrating to me that Harvey and Samantha didnt do better on the final exam, however there were some extraneous factors which may have contributed to this. I can imagine it would be difficult for some students to learn an entire Chapter taught by different, unfamiliar people each day. Each set of teachers had a different teaching style and a different approach to teaching their given lesson. I left this Algebra I class feeling like my teaching had a positive impact on students. When teaching my two lessons to the class as a whole there are many things I hope to improve upon as I get more practice teaching. Aspects such as my board work, clarity of my voice, and involving all students are specifics of what I noticed I could have done better during both of my lesson plans. Both lessons I taught were organized and to the point, my co-teachers and I were mindful to give students time to work on their homework during class and tried to make them feel open to asking questions. All students improved and expanded upon their mathematical

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

skills while we were teaching Chapter 3. The ten of us encouraged, even required, students to show all of their work and this in and of itself improved greatly while we were there. Comparing the pretests and posttest it is clear that most students saw the benefit of showing their work rather than simply writing down the answer. By the time I left the classroom it was clear to me that I had made an impact on my three students learning. For Michelle, Harvey, and Samantha it was beneficial to have more direct attention to their mathematical learning. I was able to work with each student individually almost every day. At first they were hesitant to let me know they needed help, but by the end all three felt comfortable to ask me questions and tell me when they were struggling. I got to know how each one performed in this class, what their strengths and weaknesses were and I tried to base my work with them on this skills. My time teaching at Hellgate made me see how important it is to plan what you are going to teach based on specific objectives and standards. We based our lesson plans from the students textbook, however we were sure to link our teaching objectives to the Montana Common Core Standards for Mathematics. This was important for me to do because I now understand the importance of planning your lessons to address the standards you must teach that year. If a teacher does not take the time to plan out when specific standards will be taught some may be missed. Another great learning experience for me when teaching these lessons was realizing how important it is to be flexible in your teaching. Both of my lessons were altered quite a bit because of different circumstances within the classroom. I believe that being flexible in changing the lesson allows for a more effective learning environment. These students are living and breathing, they have lives outside of school and occasionally that will affect what happens inside of the

TEACHER WORK SAMPLE: ALGERA I SOLVING LINEAR EQUATIONS

classroom. Unwillingness to alter a lesson to be more effective for students will stifle their learning and will result in less progress. After spending sixteen days in this classroom I became connected not only to my three students but to all of those in first period Algebra I. The experience of effecting each students learning, and being in charge of thirty students was one I am very thankful for. Having the ability to change my lesson plans gave me the creativity I needed to teach my given concepts well. I hope to bring what I have learned from this experience into student teaching, and into my own classroom someday.