Sarah Nordgren EDUC 342 April 4, 2013 Tutoring Paper #2 Based on my observations of Student A, I chose to implement a mathematical assessment.

As previously reported, Student A performs above average compared to others academically. However, the teacher and I have observed that he has difficulty during math time. He often raises his hand and answers questions incorrectly. When I go over to his desk to check on his progress, he is often off-task and uninterested in his math work. This leads him to go up to the board and put incorrect answers, which he told me makes him feel embarrassed. Therefore, I decided to implement a mathematical assessment to further investigate his difficulty. I wanted to pinpoint what he was having trouble with specifically, so that I could help him with an intervention. Since Student A is a unique, as is every learner, I decided to design my own assessment. I chose to do an assessment that involves tactile learning because Student A has exhibited a preference for this learning style during my observation time. Since he is most successful with tactile learning, I thought it would be important to assess him in this way so that he is most comfortable. This might help me get a more accurate evaluation of his academic ability since the type of assessment would not distract him. To begin, the teacher and I collaborated regarding the best time to implement my assessment so that Student A did not feel like he was being punished when I pulled him aside. We decided to wait until he had finished his free-write in his journal. So, while the rest of the class finished up their journals, I asked Student A if he would join me outside. He was visibly excited and told me that he was glad I asked because I had never taken him into the hall like some of the other kids. I was immediately relieved that he did not feel like he was in trouble or feel stressed about what I was going to ask him to do. I had him sit in a

chair at a desk that was the same as the one in his classroom. I sat in a chair right next to him by the classroom door in the small and quiet hallway outside the room. It was 10:22 A.M. when we began the assessment, which meant that Student A had been at school for a few hours and would eat lunch in about another hour. I told Student A that I wanted to work on some math word problems with him and assured him that the work he did would not be graded by the teacher. He was excited to get started. I handed him the work sheet and asked him to read the title for me. The title of the sheet was [Name removed for confidentiality purposes]s Pennies. Student As face lit up when he read his own name in the title. I used his name in the title and throughout the work sheet to attempt to grab his attention and keep him interested since he has ADHD. I was pleased to see how happy he was to see his name, but unfortunately he became a little silly upon seeing his own name. He started fidgeting with his pencil and squirming in his seat. He wanted to talk about why his name was in the problem and how it got there instead of working on the task at hand. After redirecting him gently, I asked him to read the first problem for me aloud. He read the question slowly and once he was finished, I placed the plastic cup and 17 fake pennies on the desk. I told him that he was allowed to use these things in whatever way he wanted to help him solve the problem. I let him explore the pennies and cup for a minute so that they would not distract him the whole time. After touching and turning the pennies briefly, I asked him how he was going to solve the problem. Student A began putting some of the pennies in the cup and pushing the rest aside. It was clear that he had not carefully thought through how he wanted to execute the problem. He looked up and started to verbally work through the numbers. He told me that 17 plus five was 22, after counting on his fingers. Unfortunately, the problem involved subtraction, not addition. Student A was using the numbers out of context, which may have caused the confusion. Since he seemed to have lost his place, I redirected him by asking him what he was trying to figure out. I then suggested

crossing out information in the problem that was not helpful and underlining the important stuff. Though he seemed to like my suggestion, he quickly realized that he could use the pennies and cup to carry out the problem. He did not use my suggestion of eliminating extraneous data. Student A put the pennies in a pile and pulled five pennies out, one by one. He counted each of the five pennies as he pulled it aside. He double-checked the work sheet to make sure that he was moving the correct number of pennies aside. Then he put the cup on top of the remaining pennies and moved them further away from the other five. He then lifted up the cup and counted how many pennies were underneath it. He told me that there were 12 pennies under the cup. I asked him to write it down on the line and he did. I wanted to see how he might compute this on paper, so I asked him if he could have also written a number sentence to figure out the problem. He stared at me with a confused look on his face. I rephrased the question and asked him if he could have written anything down to help him figure out the problem. I was impressed when he stated that he could use tally marks in place of the pennies. He drew out 12 tally marks and then told me he was going to erase five tally marks to show that they were outside of the cup. He counted up the remaining tallies and was pleased to see that his answer matched the one already on the line. Student A became distracted again and wanted to discuss what he had done over the weekend. He began to squirm again and put his face very close to mine while he talked. I kindly asked if we could move on to the next problem and he agreed. Since Student A already had the pennies separated into piles, he was able to just take four pennies away from the original pile. Then he counted up the remaining pennies and came up with eight for his answer. I had to remind him to write his answer on the line. I then asked a similar question as before, could he write anything down on the paper that would show what he did with the pennies? He said that he could draw out the pennies and then cross them out, one-by-one, but ultimately decided to continue using his tally marks. He said he liked the tally marks and I

thought they were just as good as drawing the pennies out. He wrote out his pennies and, again, erased four to get his final answer. He double-checked his answer with the one he had already written on the line. Once he was finished, I told him that I was really impressed with how he used the pennies and the cup to help him figure out the problem and that I was also impressed with how he thought to use tally marks to represent what he did. We pushed in our chairs and went back into the classroom. As Student A returned to his desk, it was time to start getting ready for lunch perfect timing! After the assessment, I went over my notes and completed the Checklist of Mathematical Problem-Solving Errors, which was provided in our class, from Successful Inclusive Teaching based on Student As assessment. I found that Student A did not delete extraneous data, pulled numbers out of context to compute, frequently acted without a plan, often lost the place in a lesson, and displayed a short attention span. He began working through the problem verbally before he thought of a careful way to execute the problem. He had trouble keeping track of the important information and was distracted by the excess words in the word problem. When I asked him about a possible number sentence, he exhibited difficulty with the concept. However, I was impressed by a lot of his ideas. When counting up the pennies, he counted by twos, which was efficient and accurate. He told me that when he reached 10 and saw two more pennies left over; he knew immediately that the answer was 12. I was also impressed that he thought to use tallies to represent the pennies, which seems like an abstract idea. He had no difficulty with the fact that each tally represented a penny. I was glad that he was able to see this as a subtraction problem since the teacher told me that this was an abstract concept for them. The teacher told me that this type of word problem was worded to seem like an addition problem and she said that the students often had difficulty with it. Since his weaknesses involved problems with focusing, organization, evaluating answers, and selecting operations and solving equations, I think an

intervention involving all of these things would be beneficial. I might do a lesson that offers helpful tips for navigating a word problem. We could work on crossing out irrelevant information and circling or underlining important information. We could also work on focusing on what we want to figure out, which would lead to him developing a thoughtful plan before starting his work. Since he has trouble with attention, I would make the materials colorful, organized, and inviting. I might have him complete short word problems on his own and then review them together so that we could refocus our attention in short spurts with small breaks in between.