Lesson

Title: Beep, Beep, Vroom, Vroom! AABB Patterns Context/Grade Level: This lesson is designed for a Kindergarten class at Clara Byrd Baker Elementary. There are twenty-one students in the class, including one student with and Individual Education Plan and two students who have been identified as English Language Learners. This is the fifth lesson in a unit on patterns during an apple themed week. Students have already been introduced to ABAB and AAB patterns. Objectives: Given manipulatives, students will arrange the manipulatives in an AABB pattern. After practice arranging items in an AABB pattern, students will create their own example of an AABB pattern. SOL: SOL K.16The student will identify, describe, and extend repeating patterns. Materials: Beep, Beep, Vroom, Vroom by Stuart Murphy, Unifix cubes 1. Read Beep, Beep, Vroom, Vroom aloud. Introduce the story, telling the children it is about a girl named Sarah who played with her brothers toy cars when he asked her not to. Tell the students that they will have to use what they have learned this week about patterns to help Sarah put the cars back in the right order before her brother returns. Throughout the reading, ask the students to identify and describe and extend the patterns Sarah makes not only with the cars, but with her sound effects. 2. Tell the students that they are going to practice making a new type of pattern today. Introduce AABB patterns by laying out two green apples, followed two red apples and two green apples. Have student volunteers extend the pattern until there are ten apples. Ask students how they could make this pattern using the letters A and B. Ask the students to think of other ways they could make this pattern through movement, with objects, with people, or with words. Ask if they see any examples of this pattern in the classroom. 3. Distribute two different colored sets of unifix cubes to each child. Instruct them to make an AABB patterns with their all of their unifix cubes. 4. After the children have assembled their unifix cubes into an AABB, ask them to take off 10 cubes and mix them up. Then pair the children and have them try to put the cubes back in the right order again, just like Sarah did with the cars in the story. 5. After the children have reassembled their partners unifix cubes, instruct them to check each others work. Ask several students to describe their patterns. Ask how they knew if their partner put their pattern back together correctly. Summarize by asking how they would name the patterns they made using the letters A and B and asking how they could tell if objects followed an AABB pattern.

 Evaluation: Before students can go to Choice centers, they must create their own AABB pattern and write a full line of this pattern on a sheet of paper. Differentiation and Adaptations: If students finish the step 5 before others, have them try making a different pattern and follow the same exercise. Support the ELLs by writing the pattern AABB on the board, ensuring that a wide range of visual examples are presented in step 2, and modeling steps 3, 4, and 5 thoroughly. Be prepared to focus more attention on these learners during group work re-explain directions as needed. Student Achievement Data

Summative Assessment Task: After practice arranging items in an AABB pattern, students will draw their own example of an AABB pattern on a dry erase board. Student Sucessful Notes Number Task Completion - 1st attempt -2nd attempt -3rd attempt 1 2 3 At first, wrote AABBAABB needed to be prompted to make his own pattern, using different symbols 4 5 Initially made ABAB pattern, then copied neighbors pattern, drew AABB pattern using circles and triangles on third attempt 6 7 8 Started an AABB pattern using xs and os but after one core, changed to ABAB, had to be prompted to check his work and make sure all of it followed an AABB pattern 9 10 Drew an AAB pattern first 11 12 Initially was just scribbling, then when prompted to show me an AABB pattern, he made an ABAB pattern, had to remodel an AABB before he was able to successfully complete 13 14 15 16 At first made ABAB pattern 17 18 19 Made an AAB pattern first 20 21

Reflection Overall, the lesson went smoothly, but there are many changes I would make to improve lesson delivery in the future. One success of the lesson was that students exhibited active listening and informed input during the read aloud and were eager to participate in making an AABB pattern as a class. One area of improvement, however, was the partner task. As Kindergartners at a very early stage of social development, my students still struggle with partner work, so having them work with a partner to expand an AABB pattern was a challenge for many of the students. In the future, I think I would make sure model the partner task with a student so that the students have an explicit example of how to work cooperatively to complete the task. Another area of improvement was the length of the lesson. My activities took less time than I originally anticipated. My cooperating teacher usually allots fifty minutes for math instruction each day, so I had hoped to fill this block, but my lesson only ended up taking about thirty minutes. Having completed the lesson, I now have a more accurate idea of the timing so I would be able to adapt the lesson to fit into an appropriate time frame. Analysis of student performance data also revealed some more areas of improvement. Student performance data indicates that all students were able to produce an original AABB pattern by the end of the lesson. 66% of the students acceptably completed the summative assessment task on their first attempt. 24% of the students acceptably completed the summative assessment on their second attempt. Two students, one of which has visual processing and fine motor difficulties, needed additional prompting and modeling beyond their second attempt to acceptably complete the task. All students, however, were able to acceptably complete the task in three attempts or less. Overall, this suggests that the lesson objectives were met, but AABB should be revisited and reinforced in the forthcoming weeks to eliminate confusion of this pattern core with the AAB and ABAB patterns students have been learning. Of the seven students who were not able to successfully complete the task on their first attempt, three exhibited confusion of AABB patterns with ABAB patterns and two exhibited confusion of AABB patterns with AAB patterns. This suggests that some of the students only noticed the alternating nature of the AABB pattern, while some students only noticed the duplication of the first term. Because the students have been learning a new pattern core almost every day, I find it unsurprising that the students are mixing up some of the patterns now. Because most of the students exhibiting this confusion needed only minimal questioning to correct their errors, I think this confusion could be eliminated with continued practice and reinforcement. One of the seven students who needed multiple attempts was a child with autism who interpreted the task very literally and needed additional explanation to understand that he was to use his own symbols rather than transcribing AABB on his board. From talking to this student, my impression is that he has a conceptual understanding of AABB patterns, but needed additional explanation of the task. The other student who needed multiple attempts has an Individual Education Plan to address visual

processing and fine motor difficulties. His difficulties seemed to stem from fine motor difficulties that made it hard for him to control the dry erase marker as well as trouble discerning the boundaries of the blocks the class had used to model AABB. When the students were creating an AABB model as a class, they had used red and blue blocks and had placed them right next to each other. I think that this student likely interpreted the two red blocks as one and the two blue blocks as one. Future instruction could be differentiated for him by allowing students to create their summative patterns using manipulatives or objects of their choosing. This would allow students who struggle with fine motor skills to communicate understanding in a way other than drawing. All in all, while there are certainly changes that I would make for future implementation of the lesson, this teaching experience was highly valuable for me. At the beginning of the semester, I was not very confident in my ability to teach mathematics. The overall success of this lesson, though it certainly could be improved, was reassurance that the skills I am gaining in crafting student- centered mathematics instruction will with continued practice make me a successful math teacher.