My Personal Philosophy

My personal philosophy starts first and foremost within yourself. An educator must have a sincere drive to care about the students and care about their success. Math skills are life skills. It is my responsibility to pass these skills onto our future. These skills are used on a daily basis and it not a subject that should be taken lightly. Not only should we teach how to perform the concepts, we must teach the concepts themselves. Why do I work the problem out this way? Should I "Invert and multiply and not ask why? That answer should be no.

Math must be reinforced daily in order for children to understand fundamental concepts as well as basic number sense. Having the care of an educator with the knowledge and desire to have students succeed, mathematics should be a concept all children have the ability to grasp and use in their lives.

Student Work

Here are a few pictures of the classroom showing student work in progress:

Assessment Profile

This profile deals with a student I started out just assessing but turned into me tutoring her because she was so far behind her classmates. I am proud to say progress was made, but she has potential left in her. Below is my "Assessment Profile":





Assessment Profile
• Student interview/discussion
The student I worked with in mathematics is Josette. She is a 5th grade student at Castlen Elementary. The thing she likes about school is Skunk, computers, class centers, Mrs. Roberts, and the library. She informed me she isn’t good at taking tests. Josette aspires to be a veterinarian when she grows up. At home, she doesn’t read but likes to go outside on the trampoline or the dirt pile. She has no wishes and said she goes to school so she can get a nice job one day. Josette tells me she has anger problems that she is trying to get over and rarely gets along with her younger brother and older sister. She does not have any friends at home and plays by herself. Her mom works late into the evening and Josette doesn’t go to bed until after she gets home.
When I begin to ask questions about math, she feels that she is very good in this subject, but she was clearly just saying that because she didn’t want to say she’s inept in math. The class was in the middle of working with factors of numbers, so I used this as the starting point. It became clear that Josette is struggling in many areas of math, such as grasping concepts like factors, and all the way down to struggling with multiplication tables and some subtraction. I decided to treat this student as someone I am tutoring, and went all the way back starting with working on subtraction, multiplication, and ultimately trying to get her on pace with the class with passing grades. As far as content area being addressed, I hope to address all because if something isn’t done immediately, Josette will always have trouble with math especially moving to middle school next year.
• Student performance/Strengths and Weaknesses
Josette’s performance was very unbalanced. That is because her attitudes and her focus usually determines how she performs when we are working together. There were days where she came in ready to learn, and days where she was unfocused and therefore, made little to no progress. She is a very capable student, and it was frustrating to see her do so well one meeting, and at the next meeting, we had to start all over in terms of getting her to focus.
We used flash cards to work with multiplication. I showed her methods on how multiplication is used in division. I worked on showing her how multiplication works. I used explanations that it was a faster way of adding up numbers, as well as modeling multiplication problems. We worked problems of division, and revisited finding factors. We also worked on probability with me talking her through problems until she was able to do them independently. We moved into fractions and she had trouble grasping concepts such as, “shade 3/5 of the blocks”. There would be more than 5 blocks there and this confused her. I assisted her in finding common denominators, and once we did a few of these problems, she had no trouble adding fractions with unlike denominators.
Josette’s strengths are that once you teach it to her thoroughly, she is able to retain the information. She improved at memorizing multiplication tables, working division problems, probability, and adding fractions with unlike denominators. When she is focused, she is able to think through problems and solve them.
Josette’s weaknesses are herself. She is fully capable of doing math. I believe when given time, she is very smart in math. Because she hasn’t had one-on-one intervention, she is somewhat slow to produce answers because she isn’t accustomed to consistently working out problems in her head. She does have trouble with problems such as shading 3/5 of an area that has more than 5 pieces to it.
• Conclusions/Recommendations
Based on many meetings with Josette, I think that there are outside factors that keeps her from staying on pace with her progress in math. She will shut down in class as far as working out problems orally with the class. She has a hard time focusing in class and one-on-one and I personally believe it has to do with her not practicing any at home, and not having the most stable home life. Having multiple meetings with Josette, she talked about her home life often, and I feel it has effect on when she comes to school. I feel like her inability to focus in class is related to this. Of course this isn’t the only factor, though, because I don’t know the entire situation. But when Josette is in the right environment, she is exceptional at math, and I had a great experience helping her progress.
As far as recommendations, she does not perform at her peak taking tests in the classroom, but when she is by herself, she is able to calm down and focus on math and not everything around her. I would recommend assistance such as I have been but on a scaled back approach. It needs to be enough that she understands what she is doing and able to work through the problems. A tutor, for instance, to help reinforce concepts learned.

My Favorite Math Lesson

My favorite lesson plan is making fraction strip booklets with the students. I feel like it is an equally enjoyable, yet equally meaningful in learning new concepts about fractions. Here is the lesson plan below:





University of South Alabama
Department of Leadership & Teacher Education
Lesson Plan Format

Name Brian Stevens Date: 10/21
School Castlen Elem. Grade Level: 5th
Teaching Strategy: Guided Time Required: 1 hour

I. Subject/Content Area
• Mathematics/ Fraction Relationships
II. Alabama Course of Study
• 8.) Recognize equivalent forms of fractions and decimals
III. Concepts
• Fraction relationships-understanding that ½ of a fraction strip is the same as 4/8 of a fraction strip
IV. Behavioral Objectives
• TSW build fraction strips to discover fraction relationships
• TSW use the fraction strips to represent fractions in a variety of ways
• TSW demonstrate understanding that a fraction can be represented in a variety of ways
V. Evaluation (Assessment included here)
• The teacher will observe students folding and making strips based on fractions, and based on their participation, it will be determined how well the student is comprehending
• The ability to find equivalent forms of fractions in a variety of ways with the whole class
VI. Materials -
• 8 strips of construction paper one inch wide and 8 inches across for each student
• Markers
• Ziplock bags
VII. Teaching/Learning Procedures
A. Motivation
• The teacher will ask students to create a list of ways they use fractions in their daily lives. Engage them in a discussion of nonstandard ways they use fractions daily. Some simple examples include dividing a treat in half (1/2) to share it with a friend, or noticing that your brother ate 3/8 of a pizza last night at dinner. The teacher will then state that the class will be making fraction strips in order to understand relationships.
B. Instructional Procedures
• .The teacher will distribute the strips in ziplock bags pre-cut so students don’t have to worry about cutting.
• Specify one color and have students hold up the strip of this color. Tell students that this strip will represent the whole. Have students write "one whole" on the fraction strip.
• Next, the teacher will ask students to pick a second strip and fold it into two equal pieces. The teacher will model folding all the strips along with the class. Ask them what they think each of these strips should be called.
• The teacher will have students pick a third strip and fold it into three equal pieces. Ask them what they think this strip should be called.
• Have students repeat the process of folding strips for ¼, 1/6, 1/8, 1/12
• Tell students to take out their whole piece and ask, “Which strip is half of this whole”. They should answer ½.
• The teacher will ask which strip is ¼ of the whole. The teacher will ask similar questions about 1/6, 1/8, 1/12.
• The teacher will ask questions about relationships such as, “How many 1/8’s do I need to make half of a whole?” “How many 1/6’s do I need to make 1 ¼ piece?”
• The teacher will work with students to discover as many relationships as possible.
• The teacher will also ask “When fractions strips are the same length, what kind of fractions are they?” The answer is equivalent. The relationship between ½, 2/4, 3/6, 4/8, 6/12 are all equivalent fractions. The teacher will make sure the students are aware of these relationships.

C. Closure
• The teacher will have the class review fraction relationships using the fraction strips
• To relate this to real life, the teacher will discuss making recipes that possibly only need half of the ingredients.
• The teacher will let them know that the following day the students will continue using strips to answer questions by getting in groups.
VIII. Supplemental Activities (Early Finishers, Enrichment, Remediation)
• There will not be any early finishers. The class will work as a whole to discover relationships.
• For enrichment, students can get a pair of scissors and cut their strips at the folded creases. Have students record each relationship amongst the fraction strips.
• Students who need remediation will be in a group with the teacher the following day when we continue working with fraction strips.
IX. Professional Reflection
• The lesson went well for majority of the class. They had fun trying to figure out how each strip higher was going to be folded. They were able to discover relationships as I asked the questions. The students were engaged because they knew those strips were theirs to keep and they were excited to learn using something they made. Things I would have done differently would be to have rulers available. The 1/12 strip was hard for some students to fold and since the strip was 12 inches long, a ruler would have been handy. The next time I teach the lesson, I would like to incorporate the smartboard version of strips used in Mrs. Byrd’s class and to introduce number lines as another way for students to visualize fraction relationships.