Lacey Wrights Self-Study

1. Student Background
I chose to use my math class for my self-study. I wasnt left with what the students
covered in this math class at the beginning of the year, so it took some time to figure out what to
teach them. The math class is only composed of 2 students. I have a 5th grader, and a 6th
grader. The two students are extremely different. The only thing that they have in common is
they are both males.
Student one is a 5th grader who has Autism, he is very good at math and does most
math in his head. Being wrong is something he struggles with. I can only get him to do things
one way, his way. He doesnt like hearing long lectures, and works best when he hears the
lecture and is given time to work on his own.
Student two is a 6th grader who has been emotionally and physically abused. He does
not live in a very good environment. Math is the subject that he excels the best in. This year he
scored in the 23rd percentile for math on the MAPS test. Reading is very difficult for student 2,
he is in the 3rd percentile for reading. Many days this student is not in academic mode, he is in
survivor mode.
2. Project Overview
My self-study was over multiplication. Students learned the multiplication properties,
using mental math to multiply, multiplying by 1- digit numbers, multiplying 2-digit by 2-digit
numbers, and multiplying 3-digit by 2-digit numbers. At the end of this multiplication unit, the
students took an assessment. The lessons took multiple weeks, being in an alternative school it
is difficult for us to get math in everyday.
When we have math class, the students come in and start working on warm-up work.
Their warm-up work is organized into an individual binder, and it has basic fact practice. The do
their warm-up work for 5 minutes, this allows their brains to start focusing on math, and allows
me to get things set up and ready for the class.
Within the project you will see my daily lessons, examples of student work, the end of
the unit assessment, analysis of data, and a final review.

 . Lessons
3
This is my lesson planning strategy, because I teach many different classes at many different
grade levels, I wanted a way I could organize my lessons, and give me feedback on things I
could do the next day. The example problems I do on the board in front of the class. I do the
examples in front of their eyes, so they can see the process. I also used different colors when
teaching so the students can see
Topic

3-1
Multiplication
Properties

Objective(s)

Examples

Assignment/
Activities

Notes on how
the lessons
went

- play toss and

talk
-Students will
complete
worksheet 3-1

This lesson
went extremely
well. Both
students knew
the information
already. This
was mostly a
review.

-Students will
gain an
understanding
of the
associative,
commutative,
zero, and
identity
properties

Identify the
property used:

3-2
Using mental
math to multiply

Students will
learn the zeros
trick when
multiplying.
When
multiplying
numbers with
multiple zeros
multiply the
whole numbers
and add the
number of
zeros.

1. 30x200=6000
2. 700x5000=
3500000
3. 80x9= 810

- have students
do some more
example
problems on the
board
- students will
complete
worksheet 3-2
-have students
pay
multiplication
war after their
worksheet to
work on basic
facts

The students
responded well
to being able to
write and do the
examples on the
board.

3-4
Multiplying by
1-digit numbers

Students will be
able to multiply
a multidigit
number by a
1-digit number.

1. 356
x 3

-have student
pick numbers
and do more
examples on the
board.
-have students
do worksheet
3-4

-This lesson
took multiple
practice days.
-Student 1 does
this in expanded
form, I
encouraged him
to show work,
incase he made

1. 4 x 5 = 5 x 4
2. 0 x 7383 = 0
3. 824 x 1 = 824
4. 3(4x1)=1(3x4)

2. 27
x 9
(scanned lesson
examples)

an addition
error.
-On the first day
I noticed student
2 had a hard
time keeping his
work organized,
so I decided to
start having him
do his problems
on graph paper.
-We did 2 days
of practice
3-5
Multiplying
2-digit by 2-digit
numbers

Students will be
able to multiply
2-digit numbers
by 2- digit
numbers

1. 92
X73
(see scanned
lesson
examples)

- have students
pick numbers
and have them
do practice
problems on the
board.
-Have students
complete
worksheet 3-5

- this process
was easier for
student 1 to
understand.
-Student 2 had a
difficult time with
the digit in the
tens place,
when multiplying
the tens digit he
would forget to
put the zero
down and try to
multiply left to
right
-students had
multiple days
and worksheets
to practice on

3-6
Multiplying
3-digit numbers
by 2-digit
numbers

Students will be
able to multiply
3-digit numbers
by 2-digit
numbers

832
x 43

-Complete
worksheet 3-6

This students
understood a lot
faster than I
thought they
would. Getting
lots of practice
doing 2-digit by
2-digit really
helped them
with this lesson.

Lesson Topic 3-5. Examples of how I represented the problems to the students, and the
strategies I taught them on how to solve the problems.

4. Student Work
Toss and Talk was an activity that the students did after they had a refresher course on the
different properties that go with multiplication. After students got an understanding of the
different properties, the students played this game. This game not only helped them practice
using and recognizing the different properties, they also got to practice their social skills.

This assignment was the practice worksheet that student 1 completed. This was a teachable
moment for him and me. I couldnt figure out how he was getting his answers, and some of them
were correct, and he missed a few. So I talked with him about showing his work, and showed
him how when he shows his work he can still earn points even if he got the question wrong.

The next two assignments are from lesson 3-5. On the top I taught the lesson and the student
seemed to understand the process during instruction. But as you can tell, the student missed
almost half of them, that was a red flag for me. So I looked back at his assignment, and I
noticed that he was not starting from the right side, and he would forget to bring down a zero
when multiplying in the tens spot. So I decided to highlight where the student needed to start in
green, and put a pink square around the tens box on the second line, so he wouldnt forget to
put a zero there. As you can see there is a great difference in the top assignment compared to
the bottom one.

5. End of unit assessment

It is important to note that the end of the unit assessment was not the only assessment I
completed during this unit. The end of the unit was a summative assessment, it assessed what
information the students had learned throughout the unit. Personally I believe formative
assessments are more valuable that summative. I completed formative assessments daily on
my students, I looked at my students body language, their work, their attitude, the questions
they asked, and many other things for my daily formative assessments. I used those daily
formative assessments to help guide my teaching. Those formative assessments helped direct
me what I should teach next, for example do I need to come up with a scaffold to help this
student? How can I teach this material differently so they will understand? Do they need extra
practice? Are they ready to move on to the next thing? Those are all questions I asked and
answered daily in my class.

6. Data

This is a bar graph that shows the scores the students got on each of the assignments. As you
can see student 1 did quite a bit better than student 2 did on the first assignments of each
lesson. Having extra practice on lessons really helped student 2. Student 2 needed the extra
practice.

This graph compares Student 1s practice vs his test score. Before making the graph, I found
the average score for the student on all lesson topics. I then went through the test and found the
questions that go with each topic, and found the score the student scored on the test for each
topic. As you can see on this graph the student mastered all topics on the test. The student
improved their score on the test for topics 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6. This indicates to me that it is time to
move on in math class.

This graph I completed the same way I did the above graph. When looking at this graph you can
see that student 2 completed better on the test for all lesson topics, except for lesson topic 3.4.
There were only three questions for lesson 3.4 and he got two out of the three correct. When
there arent that many questions, and a student misses one you can see how bad that can hurt
their graph. Because lessons 3.5 and 3.6 build off of lesson 3.4, and the student performed well
on those lessons, I am not concerned with his drop. There could be a number of different
reasons to why the student missed one question with lesson 3.4. I am very pleased with his
growth from the practice to the test.

7. Reflection
This unit was a learning experience. Not having any background information on what
topics the students covered last year was a real challenge. This whole experience has really
taught me the importance of documenting and having records on what topics students learn,
and how they performed on those units. Having that documentation helps other teachers so
they dont have to spend the extra time figuring out what topics to cover and the teacher wont
spend valuable time teaching topics the students already know.
Student one already knew how to do all of the things that were taught, so it was mostly a
refresher course. He did benefit from the extra practice, at the beginning he made a lot of
mistakes, and by the end he had his system down to, and made fewer little mistakes. Student 2
knew how to multiply but dyslexia got the best of him when we got to the multistep problems. He
had a hard time carrying numbers over, and starting from the right side and moving left. For
student 2, it helped tremendously for him to do his work on graph paper. Graph paper allowed
for him to keep his numbers in line and also helped keep his work neater. Highlighting the right
hand digit green also helped student 2, when I did this it helped move his eyes to that digit, so
he would start from the right and move left. When doing multiplication with multiple digits it also
helped to highlight the boxes that would need zeros, that way he would remember when
multiplying by the tens place, a zero automatically goes in the ones place.
Completing this self study helped me evaluate myself. After doing this, I have realized
that on my tests I need to ask more questions that deal with each lesson topic. Another thing I
really need to work on is challenging student one, especially when he already knows how to do
the problems on my lesson plans.
I am very proud that I was able to teach my very first math unit. The thing I am most
proud of is helping student 2. I am very pleased that I was able to recognize what he did wrong,
and I was able to help correct his mistakes. Student 2s growth from the practice to the test
makes me very proud.
The way both students performed on the assessment and on all of the daily practice,
shows me that they are ready to move on, and learn something new.