WGU D629 Reflective Practitioner Task 1 Example: Kindergarten Math Unit on Composition & D, Assignments of Physical Education and Motor Learning

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D 629

The Reflective Practitioner

(Western Governors University)

TASK 1

Task 1: Identifying Opportunities for Professional Growth

Introduction: I am in my second year of teaching kindergarten at a title one school in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This past school year I had 18 students in my class, 10 boys and 8 girls. I had two students who were ELL and spoke Spanish at home and English proficiently at school. I had two students on IEPs for speech. I had 3 students with high behaviors. A. Summary of Lesson Grade level: Kindergarten Content area: Math – Eureka Math, Module 4 – Composition and Decomposition. (Great Minds. 2024). Instructional strategies: The first instructional strategy I will use is modeling. The second strategy I will use is hands-on learning. Assessment strategy: The assessment for this module is observational. For the first part of the assessment, students will have a blank number bond in front of them, some unifix cubes, a dry erase marker, and a math picture of birds in a tree. Some birds are big, some are small. Some birds are flying, some are sitting. Some birds are brown, some are white. Students will be asked to tell me the parts they see in the math picture, then fill in the number bond to match. Then they must tell me what each part tells us about (part, part or whole). Students can use cubes, numbers or pictures to complete the number bond. In the second part of the assessment, students must use the same tools as before, but this time they are to listen to my math and fill in the number bond just from listening. The last part of the assessment includes placing 5 puzzle pieces that are shaped like squares and triangles into one larger square. Then students must count the number of parts and write the number. (Great Minds. 2024).

play “Shake Those Disks”, they will have a hard time coming up with how many red and yellow disks there are if they cannot count correctly. A second academic need that my students have is in the category of Critical Thinking. My students still need help making current and real-world connections from the math concepts we learn. My students also still need help understanding some math concepts that we’ve learned up until this point in the year. This need is important to consider as I planned the lesson because in the first topic of module 4, we talk about shapes and parts of shapes, and talk about objects at home or in school that we can use to solidify this concept. An example is when we talk about sandwiches, which are in the shape of a square. And I ask, “What shapes will we create when we cut the sandwich in half?”. This would be a real-world connection to an object and task they are familiar with. Students will also have a difficult time understanding this concept if they do not remember our module on shapes. In that module, we talked about how two triangles put together can make a square. Now in this module, we are talking about how the triangles are the two parts, and the whole sandwich is the whole part. This foundational concept paves the path for the idea of number bonds.

3. Two Nonacademic Needs One nonacademic need of my students is behavioral management. I have a couple of students that spent the first couple months of kindergarten just learning routines and how to control their behaviors. This has unfortunately caused these students to quickly fall behind their peers in all subjects, including math, reading and writing. This is important to consider because these students still struggle with poor behavior choices, which leads to time away from learning the math content they need to learn. These students often lose privileges to play the fun math games and lose out on that extra practice with number bonds and taking turns with a partner.

They also spend time sitting out because they either needed to take a calm down break or be taken to administration. Another nonacademic need of my students is self-esteem and confidence. Students that are lower or mid-range academically in math can easily watch their peers quickly understand the concepts and strategies to solve these math problems and get frustrated because they are not understanding it as quickly. This is important to consider as I planned the lessons because I don’t want these students to feel frustrated or defeated, but instead I want to lift them up and give them the tools they need to succeed. I want to be able to pair them with a student who can help them understand in a helpful and positive way. I also want to build these students up with compliments when they solve the problem correctly. Many of my students struggle with self-esteem issues and often give up quickly. I want to focus on this and help those students begin to see and find ways to succeed in math.

4. Why I chose these instructional strategies in Part A The two instructional strategies I chose in Part A were modeling and hands-on learning. I chose modeling as a strategy because as I mentioned in part B2, many of my students come into kindergarten with a poor concept of counting 1-to-1. Many of my students also cannot sort or understand spatial relationships with shapes and parts. By modeling, I can help students understand what it looks like to count one object while saying one number name to match. I can also show them how to not count correctly. I would do this by moving one bear over and counting “1, 2,” then moving another bear, “3, 4, 5”. And students would have to tell me if I was counting correctly or incorrectly. Based on the module I mentioned we are learning about; I can also show students how to sort correctly and incorrectly by modeling. Sorting is an important step in composing for addition. This will help them visually see how to count and sort to get them ready to compose and decompose.

formative assessment. I will tell a story about animals at the zoo, and students need to first draw the math story on paper, and then create a number bond from their drawing. This will help me understand if students understand what I’ve been teaching. The standard for this lesson is from the Colorado Academic Standards: K.OA.A.3 Students can: Decompose numbers less than or equal to 10 into pairs in more than one way, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each decomposition by a drawing or equation (e.g., 5 = 2 + 3 and 5 = 4 + 1). (Colorado. 2020). My students were overall excited and eager to learn this new skill and they seemed very engaged.

2. Results – Student Performance In the observational assessment in Part A, students are to build me a number bond based on the story I read them, or from a math picture that they look at. They are to decide what the two parts will be, write them down, and create a number bond from that. They can use any math manipulatives they need to. Based on the three tasks students are asked to do during the observational assessment, I will be able to tell if students understand the learning objective for the module, which is; Model composition and decomposition in story problems. (Great Minds. 2024). 3. Success The most successful part of my lesson was when I first introduced the math game “Shake Those Disks”. I used the I do, we do, you do method and found this to work best when first explaining a game to my students. They got a chance to see me use the manipulatives correctly, and how to sort the colors, then write a number bond. When students sit with their partner, before they begin playing, I give them 1 minute to play with the manipulatives before starting the game correctly. This gives them a chance to get their wiggles and curiosity out with the game pieces. This helped them be successful. 4. Improvement

An area of growth in teaching these concepts is in the creation of drawing the story and creating a number bond to match. About 15 of my 18 students clearly understood what to do, but the remaining 3 students could have used a lot more practice and repetition.

5. Instructional Change Next time I would like to start each lesson with more practice in creating math drawings and number bonds. I would also like to try pairing those students with a student who understands and can help them, which would be beneficial to both students. I could also create a small group that would work one-on-one with either me or my full-time aide on this concept until they better understand how to solve the problem. a. Justification of Instructional Change These changes would positively impact student outcomes because they are getting extra practice time with me, with peers and with another adult. The more exposure to this concept that they can receive, the better. When they work 1-on-1 with me, I can monitor their progress and see what changes need to be made and what mistakes they are making. D. Personal Bias D.1. One personal bias I might have during the teaching of this module is my student’s socioeconomic status. I often see students' potential for success and competence by what they look like, how their family looks, and how involved their parents are in their education. This bias will negatively impact student learning because I might just assume that my students who come from lower income families who don’t seem like they care about their child’s education, aren’t going to succeed. This then means that I might not give as much attention to those students and might only focus on the students who look more upkept and whose families ask me about their learning often. This is in fact not true, and it turns out that those students who

Another way I could grow professionally is through mentorship with another teacher in my district. E.2.a This would help me grow professionally by watching this mentor teacher teach the same lessons in module 4, and seeing how they teach. I can learn new concepts and ideas for how to better engage my students, differentiate, and run small groups. I could also ask them questions when a lesson didn’t go as planned or the students are struggling to grasp the concpet. I can ask for advice when students need more practice and get ideas from them. The mentor could also come watch me teach and provide feedback, both positive and areas of growth. By having a mentor teacher, this will help me learn to teach better, ask questions and have a positive impact on student learning by receiving help. Colorado Dept. of Education. (202 4 ). 202 4 Colorado Academic Standards. CDE. https://www.cde.state.co.us/standardsandinstruction/standards Great Minds | Eureka Math2. (202 5 ). Greatminds.org. https://greatminds.org/eurekamathsquared WGU. (202 5 ). Bias and Reflective Practice. Utah