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Robert Cole The student that I will be working with this semester is Robert Cole and he is a sixth grader at Shortridge Junior High School. Robert is struggling with a few of his classes this semester in Mathematics and English and has not met the requirements for his grade level. I will be working with Robert to have a better understanding in Mathematics and prepare him to take the ISTEP. In examining Shortridge Junior High School it shows how the majority of the students are minorities. 77% of the students are on a free lunch program and 3% are on a reduced plan. In the school 60% of the students have passed their ISTEP test. When looking at the scores of Shortridge compared to Indiana as a whole the difference is noticeable. The average for Indiana is 72% of the students passed and at Shortridge the number of students who passed was 60%. In looking at how the sixth graders did in math it shows that for Indiana as a whole the number was 83% and for Shortridge the number was 87%. For language arts the state preformed at 77% and at Shortridge 85%. The school did better than the average when you look at the individual grade and content area compared to the state. Robert was one of the students who did not pass this test. When looking at how Robert did not pass it shows how he did in comparison to other Indiana students. With the state average being lover than the one from Shortridge we can see how he might fit in a higher range if he went to a different school. Robert is a student that is an active young man. He is involved in sports in the community. The sports that he is interested in are basketball and football. When asked to draw something that is important to him he drew a basketball and talked about his family in

Blanusa 2 the different sections of the ball. He also likes doing different things with his family and spending time with friends watching movies and playing different games. When talking about his family he talked about how his sister is always getting into his business and interested in his life. He also talked about his dad and how he would like to be like him when he grows up. As a future educator it helps remind me that as my students come in my class they all will have different goals and interests. It is my job to help them find ways to shine and open their eyes to different parts of the world and work force. While seeing these new ideas about things they could do they might be more interested in finding a new passion. What Robert said shows how a majority of people his age thinks about how they will grow up and be like their parents. Robert told me about how he wants to work to be better at different activities in and out of school. He talked about how he would like to become better in English and spend more time working on different reading assignments. Robert also wants to strive to become a better athlete. He understands that this takes time and work to do so and is planning on doing what is needed. He talked about how he knows that practice is the best way to become better and I plan on using this to help teach him. I found it very interesting how Robert knew that to become better at something you have to practice it. Even though Robert said he wanted to become better in English, I know that there is away to show him how to be better at math. With Robert understanding that to become better at something it takes time and practice, I will help him to see it can make a big difference. To do this I am going to show him the improvement that he makes every time we meet with the different problems that we practice in math. In the different problems I would like Robert to use other sources to learn also. I would like for him to read so that he knows were to pull variables out of the equation.

Blanusa 3 I also plan on using his knowledge about basketball to come up with ways to teach him how to do different problems. We will look at the scores of teams to make graphs and know how the statistics will affect what he does. This will give him more real life connections and give him something that he will be more interested in and connect to something he is interested in. It will also help again with reading different problems to take what he needs out of it. When I looked over the data I was a little confused that he said he struggles the most in language arts. His score in math is a 419, which is far below the grade level. The math SRI score was lower than the language arts score, so he should be struggling more in math. In examining his test results it shows that the main area that he struggles with for math is how to understand what different variables mean in math. According to his results he is missing four areas in math, which put him below the average for the school and grade. The four areas that he needs to show improvement are: writing and solving problems with three variables, the use of parentheses in a problem, linear functions, and integral problems. These four parts come from the standards three (Algebra and functions). His scores for English were higher however he missed more parts on the testing for them. It makes me want to work with more problems where he has to read the material and then take out math variables. In working with word problems, Robert will also have the chance to work on some of his reading skills because he says thats where he struggles the most in school. He also shared how he would like to do games to learn the different concepts because it is hard for him to keep his attention on things.

The Support Plan

Blanusa 4 In working with student Robert Cole, I have begun to see how he struggles in math. In math he does very well on certain problems and concepts while in others he does not fully understand how to do it. The main area that I see a struggle in is how to find the unknowns in problems. When he is working on different types of equations he does not understand what to label as an unknown. I believe that the main reason he struggles with this is because he does not take the time to think of a picture in his head. The area that I have seen Robert excel in is when to know the groundwork or foundation of math concepts. With him having an understanding of main concepts it made it clear that he needed help building upon those topics. Observing Robert as a student I have learned some of the best ways to help him to learn new material. Robert is the type of person that learns best from working out a problem and then explaining it to me. He also is the type that needs to practice the same type of problem. When he practiced working out problems he was able to ask questions and then use them to help him solve more complicated problems. Robert also used drawing out ideas when he was coming up with ways to apply the problems to what we were doing. Robert has scored below the standards in 6.3.2, 6.3.4, 6.3.8, and 6.3.9. These are all under the grade level standard for Algebra and Functions. They break down into different parts of algebra. The first area, 6.3.2, has a main focus of solving problems by writing a formula. I saw how he needed help with this when we working on looking at word problems and taking the main points out of them. The next standard that he struggled with was 6.3.4, which handled using parentheses to solve a problem. This standard also worked with order of operations in an equation. Robert did not understand how you would have to do certain parts before moving on to the other parts. In 6.3.8 the standard is to use linear equations to solve a

Blanusa 5 problem involving a graph. To do this Robert would need to generate an equation from a problem and then apply that equation to make a graph for the data. The standard 6.3.9 is how one variable would change another one. This was hard for him to understand because it was on how values would both change when looking at a chart. These are the 4 standards that Roberts scores showed he struggled with. I also saw how he struggled with concept 6.4.4. In 6.4.4 the standard is to understand the interior angles from triangles. I found out that he struggles with this when I gave him a problem that had a triangle and he did not understand how they were made and the ways that the inside angles would be related to make a total of 180. To help Robert better understand the standards I plan on using a few different strategies to help. The first one that I will use to help him will be by using a Graphic Organizer. Using this will give him a chance to better understand what part of the problem to use when he is working on them. It will help him with word problems to organize the data that he is gathering and then separate the variables that he needs to use. Also, this would give him a chance to think about what he knows how to do in the topic so that he can form an equation to find the unknown values. Robert will be able to also use this when he is working with the standard on order of operations because it will allow him to think about what to use and when to use it. For example, if he were to think of PEMDAS as a strategy he can break it into the different parts as a separate area. This will help Robert to understand how to separate things and apply different areas. Another strategy that will be useful for Robert will be a KNWS. These are very similar to a KWL. This will prove to be very useful because Robert already has an understanding or a foundation of the topics and this will work as a way to better his

Blanusa 6 understand and build upon that. With a KNWS it will help him to understand the variables that he is looking at. He will be able to take out what he needs and does not need from a problem to better understand what he is looking at. This type of strategy can be used as a table in which he will have what he knows in an area, what he does not need, what he is being asked, and how he will get to an answer for the question. I believe this will also help Robert not feel over whelmed when he is beginning to look over problems that he is doing. Using this for world problems and on the standard dealing with multivariable questions will help him to break it down and see the relation between different parts. The use of a learning log with Robert has also proven to be very useful in tutoring him. I have used this strategy because it is hard to only see him once a week and continue to build on it. This will give him a place to write down what he has learned so that he will know where to use it in the problems when we come back the next week. By having him review this reminds him of what we have done in the past so that we can move forward. It also would give me a way to assess what we are talking about at the end of the day. It will enable me to see if he its truly understanding the concept that we are focusing on. To help Robert with word problems I would like to make use of the strategy Word Problem Roulette. I will have to modify this because I am working with only one student, but it will give me a way to have him try multiple world problems and understand them. When he does these problems he will have a way to try them and explain what he is doing to me after he arrives at a solution. This is very important to Robert to be able to explain what he is doing because that is the best way to learn new things. Learning through teaching and explaining what you have done for someone else. This strategy can also be used as if I were

Blanusa 7 to work with another group because then the two students can teach what they are doing to each other. For math it is important to understand that problems may have different steps. To help show this I plan on making use of five step problem solving. This will be another tool that Robert can use to break down the problems into different parts. As he works through the Algebra standards he will be able to see how different parts of a problem play a role in finding the solution. He will benefit form the break down not only in word problems but when it comes to the standard that touches on how to set up equations and knowing when to do the parts. This will also help him in the future as he gets into higher-level math classes that have problems that require multiple steps. I will make use of problems like this by having it set up as a flow chart. The first part of the question will ask for a certain part of the problem and then build as he goes through the different steps. When I think about how to best help Robert I need to think of more ways to make sure that the knowledge is being remembered by him. What I am doing is adding to the foundation so that in his classroom he will be able to continue to build upon it. I also need to think more about hints to help him solve problems that relate to the main concept that we are trying to cover. One of the finial areas I am questioning is how to keep him interested. How long should the brain breaks be for him to cover the most knowledge.