Rachel Strunk

MAED 3224
05/09/2018

Clinical Reflection

While I was in my IMB experience, the students began to learn about decimals. They
had just spent a long time on fractions, so I think decimals were a welcome change. The
standards addressed in the decimal unit were NCSS 4.NF.6, which says that students should be
able to use decimal notation for fractions with denominators 10 or 100, and 4.NF.7, which says
that students should be able to compare two decimals to hundredths by reasoning about their
size, recognize that comparisons are valid only when the two decimals refer to the same whole,
record the results of comparisons with the >, <, and = symbols, and justify their conclusions
using a visual model. So one of the major goals of the unit was for students to understand the
relationship between, for example, ½ as a fraction and 0.5 or 0.50 as a decimal. Another goal
for the unit was for students to compare decimals, which I did not know how they would do
because many of them had struggled with comparing fractions.
My clinical teacher does not use whole group instruction for mathematics. She finds
that small group rotations give her the flexibility she needs for teaching students with different
levels. This is also a very difficult group behaviorally, so having them in small groups and
keeping them moving to a new rotation works well for them. In every rotation, my cooperating
teacher has a teacher group. To introduce decimals, she explained that the students were going
to learn another way to represent a part of a whole, other than using a fraction. She used base
ten blocks to explain that any time the students use a decimal, the whole that it is a part of is
100. She then went on to explain that 0.01 was the same as 1 ones (or in this case, hundredths)
block and that 0.10, or 0.1, was the same as 1 tenths block. The students then got to use the
base ten blocks to explore decimals more with the guidance of the teacher.
The other rotations the students complete are a partner rotation, an independent
rotation, and a technology rotation. In the technology rotation, the students have a
mathematics application, called Math Playground, that has math based games that they can
use. Sometimes they are limited into what kind of game they can play (e.g. only fractions games
or only multiplication games) and sometimes they can play what they like. This station is often
Rachel Strunk
MAED 3224
05/09/2018

used for students to review material that has already been taught and mastered. In the partner
rotation, students are asked to play a math theme game or complete a math themed task that
is related to what they have been learning. For example, after students were confident with
decimals, they began comparing decimals by playing Decimal War, a version of the card game.
They also played a Memory type matching game where students had to try to match the
decimal as it was written out with the visual model of the decimal. On most days, I became the
teacher for whatever the students were doing in this group. In the independent station,
students would independently complete work that was based off of what the students had
been taught the day before in the teacher group. This was often a worksheet but was
sometimes something a little more fun. For example, one day students had to create a decimal
poster. Students were given a decimal. On their poster they had to write their decimal, write
the decimal in fraction form and also draw a visual model of the decimal. This was also a great
place for differentiation because the higher level students were given decimals more than 1
whole (e.g. 1.42), while the lower level students were given decimals that were less than 1
whole. The information from the independent work would then be used to group students
based off of their understanding of the material.

Math Rotation Chart

Rachel Strunk
MAED 3224
05/09/2018

My cooperating teacher was fond of using the “I do, We do, You do” model of teaching.
She was great about modeling her thinking process while teaching or reviewing homework
questions with the students. She was also great about giving students enough structure to be
able to complete their work, but also making them think about why they did what they did. For
example, she wouldn’t just ask, “How do we add decimals together?” She would also ask, “How
should we line up our columns to add the decimals together?” and “Why do we have to line the
columns up that way?” If the students seemed confused or were unable to answer the
questions, she would ask guiding questions like, “Can I add together a tenths column and a
hundredths column? Does that make sense? Why can’t I do that?” She really made students do
the mental work so that they could build conceptual understanding and not just be able to
mechanically do a series of procedures with no understanding whatsoever.
I got to spend a lot of time working with students. As I said above, I pretty much took
over the “Partner Group” rotation. My cooperating teacher really appreciated this because
even though the students were usually doing some kind of fun math related activity that is
meant to be practice of what they have learned the day before, she liked that there was still a
teacher there to reinforce concepts and to correct misconceptions. I would usually get to school
early enough in the morning for my cooperating teacher to be able to explain to me what the
partner group activity for that day would be. This would also give me a chance to look at the
small groups created and think about the ways that the activity could be altered for
differentiation; made more structured for students in need of support or more difficult for
students who need a little bit more of a challenge. Sometimes that was using different sets of
cards (in the case of the Mathelogical Liar game or Decimal War) and sometimes it was adding
more steps in or asking them to connect the decimals to fractions. Working with the small
groups really helped me to understand the misconceptions that students can develop and why
it is important to sometimes step back and reteach so that students can move forward with a
good foundation.
When decimals were first introduced, students struggled a bit in understanding the
place value concepts that were being used. They did not understand why there was no ones
Rachel Strunk
MAED 3224
05/09/2018

column and why the hundredths column was to the right of the tenths column. At first my
teacher was just teaching the place value to the right of the decimal. I think students were
getting confused because, other than the decimal point, the numbers looked the same as what
they were used to, and the new place value concepts were not fitting into their schema. When
my teacher realized that there were a lot of misconceptions, she added columns to the left of
the decimal point; the traditional Ones, Tens, and Hundreds columns that the students were
used to. This seemed to help correct the misconceptions for most of the students. For the ones
that were still confused, I did a small group activity where I related decimals to money, a
concept with which these students were already familiar. I related that how we write down
how much money we have is basically the same as how we write down decimals. I had before
them a 1 dollar bill, 100 pennies, 10 dimes, and 20 nickels. Students were able to understand
that the dollar was the whole (or would be in the Ones column) and went to the left of the
decimal point. They were then able to understand that anything less than a dollar went to the
right of the decimal point. I would ask them how much of one dollar were different amount of
money (e.g. how much of a dollar is three pennies?) and would ask them to write that down,
which is basically writing down decimals. We would then place the money in a place value chart
that I made, so that students could visually construct the chart. This seemed to correct any
remaining misconceptions about decimal place value, and the students really enjoyed it,
because they always enjoy anything with money it seems.
Overall, once students understood the place values related to decimals, they seemed to
understand the rest of the unit easily. Adding and subtracting decimals was not a problem for
them because they pretty much got to use the standard algorithm. Even converting a decimal
into a fraction went pretty easily once they understood that a decimal is always out of 100 (e.g.
0.62 is the same as 62/100). I believe that the students in this class (with the exception of one
EC student who is very behind in all content areas and needs remedial help) were ready to
move on to more difficult content. Shortly after my IMB experience, they moved on to a unit on
measurement that the students are finding more difficult. The students seem to understand the
Rachel Strunk
MAED 3224
05/09/2018

metric system well, but the English system of measurement is proving to be much more difficult
for them.