BJ Hemphill

October 22, 2014

MIAA 350
Reflection #1
1st Grade Arithmetic
Ten Frame
I went into a first grade class at Victory Elementary for a brief time and the following is
what I observed of a small group:
While the rest of class began working on their seat work, the teacher went around and
collected five students and asked them to join her at table toward the back of the room. The
teacher began the reteach lesson by asking a question after she put a "ten frame" on the small
whiteboard she held up. The question was, "What does this look like?" there was no response, so
she asked the question again. This time a student raised her hand and said, "Something with ten
boxes." The teacher said that is right it is a "ten frame." Her next question to the group was,
"What would you do with a ten frame - something with ten boxes - what would it help you to
do?" A couple of students raised their hands while other started blurting out answers, so she had
to remind them that she would only call on those who has a hand raised. The child she called on
answered, "I could count to ten because there are ten boxes."
The teacher said, "That's right, we could use this ten frame to count to ten - let's count the
boxes together." The group quietly started counting the boxes as the teacher pointed to them.
Her next question to them was," What does it help us do? Does it make it harder or easier to
count to ten?" The students answered in unison, "Yeah (yes), it would make it easier to count to
ten." So, the teacher went on with the lesson by asking another question, "What if I put three
things here in the boxes, how many are missing to make up ten?"

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One little girl said, "Seven," the teacher said correct and then asked her to share what she
was thinking...how did she come up with seven. The students went on to explain, "Because, there
are five on the bottom and two on the top."
During the time that I observed this class, I saw the teacher use a set model
demonstrating the "missing addend" strategy with the small group of kids she was helping out.
She referred to the model numerous times and used several examples - giving each student time
to think about their answers and time to revise if they weren't quite correct.
The questions the teacher was asking fell mostly into quadrants A and B (Teacher
Questions by Quadrant) and on Blooms DOK (Depth of Knowledge) 1 or 2. When I saw what
the teacher was doing, I knew right away that she was using the missing addend strategy. I feel
that after a time when a teacher doesn't use primary or intermediate strategies, we tend to forget
what we automatically use in the upper grades and forget how labor intensive it is at the lower
grades. I'm sure as the year goes on that the teacher will move her students into quadrant C and
D, perhaps by asking questions like: how is then ten frame different from this ten frame, is there
another way you could explain your answer to me, how could you teach that to others?
To teach students to have true knowledge of math concepts in the lower grades is
something we upper grade teacher take for granted. So, I was glad to have the opportunity to
observe the primary classroom because it helped me to be aware of the happenings in primary
classes. We tend to stay in our own life levels and seldom reach out to the lower grades. I think it
would truly benefit teachers in the upper grades to (ever now and again) collaborate with
teachers from all life levels.

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