Fiona Connaghan October 19th, 2012 EPS 513 Planning Commentary Part I I: Content Focus and Standards For

my lesson, the main focus was the application of percents to real world situations. Students were expected to take the knowledge they had gained on percents and use that information to calculate things such as sales tax and tip. The objective of the lesson was to use percents in estimating or computing taxes, tips and discounts. This objective is aligned with the Common Core Standard, 7.RP.3, which states that seventh graders will, Use proportional relationships to solve multi-step ratio and percent problems. Examples: simple interest, tax, markups and markdowns, gratuities and commissions, fees, percent increase and decrease, percent error. In other words, students are expected to use their knowledge of percents to calculate totals after sales tax and tip. In order to complete this lesson, students needed a clear understanding of what a percent was and how to calculate percents. Students learned these skills and concepts in prior chapters. II: Knowledge of Students to Inform Instruction When planning this lesson, reviewing my students overall academic performance and closely examining student ability levels was key. We have many high-performing students in this class, but we also have quite a few students who require additional assistance and support in their learning. With the diversity of ability levels in the classroom, a central focus of my planning was targeting a focus group. We often group students by ability level in this class. The students requiring more assistance are usually seated together at a table so that the teacher can focus her attention on these students. Students at the middle ability level are grouped with stronger and more fast paced students. All of these students can work their way through problems together, bouncing ideas off of each other and assisting each other. Grouping students in this way for the lesson really helped with my classroom management. As stated before, in order to complete this lesson, students really needed a clear understanding of what a percent was and how to calculate percents. Students who had not quite mastered these skills were placed in my focus group. I determined these students based upon performance in previous chapters where percents were studied along with a quiz on percents administered to students the week before. Analyzing their NWEA scores also assisted in this process. III: Supporting Student Learning When starting to plan for this lesson, I knew that this group of students needed some help organizing their work, especially with multi-step percent problems. So as I set out putting my materials together, I knew I wanted to include a form for students to organize and label their work. The question in the book is quite vague and just tells students to figure out how much their total restaurant bill would be after tax and tip, and how much each person should pay. It does not explain to students that first they must decide what they will order off the menu, calculate their

total, add up everyones totals in their group to obtain their sub-total, calculate a 15-20% tip, calculate a 6% tip, put it all together to obtain their group total and then divide the bill up evenly to determine how much each individual must pay. In order to allow my students as much independence as possible while working through this problem, I decided I would provide each of them with a slip to help them organize their work (see the supporting document for said slip). Since I also knew that working with percents in real-world situations was still relatively new for this class, I decided that their Do Now should include some percent work where they have to calculate sales tax. This was strategically placed at the start of my lesson in order to help refresh students memories and prepare them for the problem they would be working through that day. This would also help them to work through the lessons problem more independently without too much teacher support. Additionally, I also set aside time during the launch of my lesson to provide students with the context of the problem. Many of our students have not experienced eating at a sit-down style restaurant where a server brings the food and drinks out. A segment of this lesson was designated as a time for the class to discuss restaurant and tipping (See the We Do portion of the lesson plan). This discussion also provided some hints on how to calculate 15% and 20% using 10%. This again, was planned into the lesson to help provide students with the background knowledge they would need to work through this problem independently. In supporting the students in their development of a deeper understanding of the content, one of my key teaching strategies was not answering too many questions during the explore portion of the lesson. The students should struggle a little bit as they work their way through the problem. Once they discover a strategy that works for them, they will never forget that strategy and they will have a much more meaningful understanding of the content. Whenever a group would call me over, I would always try to answer their question with a question. The question I would provide would help guide the students to a possible solution for their original question. Please note that before this lesson began, students did not know that they could simply type in .15 x $13.95 to calculate 15% of $13.95. Many students approached the problem thinking that for ever dollar (or 100 hundred pennies) it would be an additional 15 pennies/cents for the tip. In this regard, they could very easily figure out 15% of 13 whole dollars, but they struggled in determining how many cents additional for the remaining 95 cents. When students reached this part, many of them raised their hands looking for a way to figure this issue out. Instead of explicitly giving them an answer, I pointed them to other strategies, such as pictures and percent bars. I did this specifically so that during the summary portion of the lesson students would be able to share out a variety of strategies. Having the students work through the problem in this way gave the students a much deeper understanding of what a percent truly means (out of 100) and how to use this knowledge to solve problems. It also helps students to realize why we can multiply .15 and 13.95 to determine 15% of $13.95. One of the student misunderstandings that became apparent during this lesson was the way they typed in cents in their calculators. For example, many students understood that for 15% of the total, this would mean 15 pennies for every 100 hundred pennies or 1 dollar. So if their total was $13, they would type in 15 x 13, since we need 15 cents for each of the 13 dollars. This would give them 195. When students saw this number they would be confused because it was so high. They would often view this as 195 dollars instead of 195 pennies. Even once they realized it was pennies, they would struggle in calculating how many dollars 195 pennies equal. In order to clarify this misunderstanding I had to constantly use verbal reminders and probing questions to help students realize that we are talking about 195 pennies, not dollars. As students typed in

their calculator I would also ask them why they were multiplying 15 and 13. They would then proceed to explain why. I would then point out that when looking at what they typed into their calculator, it really looked like they were multiplying 15 dollars times 13 dollars instead of 15 pennies times 13 dollars How can we fix that? This would lead many students to change that 15 to a .15 In planning ahead, I also though a lot about how I would assist my struggling students and challenge my gifted ones. One of the great things about Connected Math (the series we use), is that a lot of differentiation is built into each problem. For example, problem 4.3 has multiple steps to it (See Student Book Problem 4.3). The main skill of the problem is introduced and practiced in the very first step of the problem. As you move on to the next steps, the questions become more challenging and advanced. The gifted students in this class often get to multiple steps of the problem, therefore they are challenged while still practicing the main skill introduced in the first step. Struggling students typically do not make it past the first step of the problem, but they are provided with a sufficient amount of time to experiment and explore the main skill of the problem. These students will also receive more attention and guidance from the teacher during the explore phase of the lesson. IV: Supporting Student Understanding and Use of Academic Language Helping the students to become more comfortable using percents and the language of percents in real-world situations was a key component to this lesson. During this lesson students were introduced to terminology such as consumers, sales tax and tip. Having students explain what each one means at the beginning or the lesson was important. Modeling the use of vocabulary like these was also key. One way to help students become more comfortable with this terminology was by having them use it in their work. Students were required to label all of their numbers and calculations in there work not only to keep them organized, but also to help them realize what they are calculating and forcing them to use that vocabulary. In order for these students to do well on the unit test, they have to have a deep understanding of the difference between tax amount and total after taxes. Working with both of these items helped students become more comfortable in telling the difference between the two. V: Monitoring Student Learning One form of assessment I rely heavily on in evaluating student learning and misunderstanding is informal observations during the explore phase of the lesson. It is during this portion of the lesson I get to listen to the students and see how they view and think about the problem at hand. It also makes misunderstandings and any confusion very apparent. This type of assessment was used during this lesson. When we went over the problem and student strategies during the summary of the lesson, I was able to target the misunderstandings and attempt to clarify any confusion. Additionally, I also created a more formal form of assessment as my exit slip. For the exit slip, students had to work through a similar problem to problem 4.3. It was a parallel problem but containing different numbers and percents (See exit slip attachment). The exit slip is straight forward and to the point, and specifically assesses the students on the objective. It is still a real life situation problem, and the use of vocabulary in the labeling of their work was required.

Fiona Connaghan December 5, 2012 EPS 513

Planning Commentary: Part II Below you will find a bar graph which describes the percentage of students who completed each question on the final assessment correctly. There were a total of 21 students who took the final assessment. Please refer to the key below, which matches each question with its aligned learning target.

Key: 1.) Blue (1a, 1b, 2a) - Student will be able to calculate the percent of a total. 2.) Red (1c) Student will be able to use addition to add percent of the bill on to get total. 3.) Green (1d) Student will be able to use division to divide up final bill equally. 4.) Orange (2b) Student will be able to use subtraction to calculate discount amount.

I Analyzing Student Learning

After analyzing my assessments, I can see the majority of students understand the need to use the operation of multiplication when calculating a percent of a number. A substantial number of students were able to correctly answer the questions aligned with this learning target. There were a total of three questions aligned with this target. In the first two, 76-81% of students were able to correctly answer the problem. For the third one, however, only 57% were able to correctly answer the question. After reviewing the assessment, I realize that more students

struggled with the latter question because it required a higher degree of critical analysis on their part. In the first two questions, students were provided with the exact percent they were to calculate. In the third question (question 2a), however, students were given the percent paid of the original price, and were asked to give the sale price. Students were used to working with the operation of subtraction when working with discounts. Student C, for example (refer to graphs below for Student C), did not use multiplication to solve this problem, but instead went directly to subtraction. Many other students went straight to calculating the percent of the total, and then subtracting it out. Since the problem was presented in a way where the customer paid 75% of the original price, students simply had to calculate 75% of the original price. The presentation of this problem was just different from what students were used to seeing. In terms of the 20-30% who did not answer a single one of these questions correctly, I began noticing a trend in their work too. Many of these students knew they needed to use multiplication in order to determine the percent of a number, however, they had some confusion with decimal place values. For example, in question 1b, the answer was $2.40. Students would often change this to $2.04. This informs me that students understand the algorithms necessary to calculate percents, but their misunderstandings of decimal place values are hindering their ability to successfully answer the questions correctly. Another learning objective assessed in this quiz targeted students ability to finish calculating totals by adding tax and tip to the subtotal. Again, most students did well with that question too. 100% of the students knew they needed to use addition to answer this question. Unfortunately, the design of this assessment was not ideal, as each part led to the next. This means, that if students made a slight error in 1a or 1b, they would also then get the rest of question 1 wrong too. So for students who made errors in their decimal place values (ex. $2.04 for $2.40), they would also get question 1c wrong, as they would be adding on the wrong amount for tip. This same problem, led to a lower percent of students answer question 1d correctly as well. Again, I had 100% of students using the correct operation (division) to answer 1d. Unfortunately their quotient was incorrect. This is a lesson learned for me. In the future, I have to make sure my assessments are valid and reliable. The question most often missed by students on this assessment was 2b. Similar to 2a, I think students were simply misled by the way the problem was presented. Students had difficulties differentiating between the amount paid on the item versus the amount discounted. Students encountered very few, if any, problems presented in this manner. As student A is a shining example of this, it was still good to see that 33% of students could correctly answer this problem, even though it required them to more closely examine the question. It demonstrates a true mastery of the skills and concepts studied in this unit for these particular students. However, it also raises concerns for me as a teacher, for the other 67% who missed it. These students will only be able to answer percent questions parallel to the questions they are used to encountering. My goal as an educator is to help develop my students as critical, independent thinkers who can apply their knowledge to the various situations they will encounter throughout their lives. For the 67% of students who struggled with question 2, they will need to go back in for a deep dive into percents in order to truly develop a meaningful understanding of this concept. Another problem, may also have been their struggles with their reading comprehension skills, just another factor to keep in mind as I analyze my data.

II Feedback to Guide Further Learning The graphs below help summarize work for each of the three target students. The first graph shows overall score for each student. The second set of graphs illustrates which questions on the assessment each student got correct or wrong.

For students who struggled on the assessment, feedback was provided directly on the assessment. For example, student B had difficulties with question 1c. She knew to add on the tip

amount to the total, but instead of also adding on the tax amount, she added the tax percent. To help guide her thinking, I wrote some questions on her test for her to read through and think about. I also approached her on a one-on-one situation. She quickly recognized her mistake, and I encouraged her to take more time when working through an exam. I believe her lower level reading skills also contributed to her struggles on the quiz. In question 1d, she simply put the final total, instead of dividing the total evenly between three people. She wasnt even answering the question at hand, and she didnt show her work for it either. Not only did I write on her test that she needed to read more carefully and show all work, but I also verbally pointed this out to her after school when we met. Although Student B struggled with comprehending the test questions and showing her work, she did demonstrate other great skills and mathematical habits. For example, she labeled all of her answers correctly, using dollar and percent signs in the appropriate areas, and she properly demonstrated decimal place values when representing money. She also seemed to have a firm understanding of the need to use multiplication when calculating a percent. These were all strengths I pointed out to her so that I could encourage her to keep up that good work. Her main focus now just needs to be in tightening up her understanding on how to use the percent she knows how to calculate to help her be successful in adding or dividing up the bill properly. One of the main purposes of this unit was to make percent calculating applicable to real life situations, so that when shopping, our students will be able to navigate their way efficiently through the world market. Student B still does not have a very deep comprehension of these skills. It appears that she only has a surface-level understanding thus far. For Student C, her struggle came with actually calculating the percent. Student C was able to properly calculate the percent in 1a, but then seemed to become confused with questions 1b and 2a. In both situations she switched from using the operation of multiplication to instead using subtraction. It is very clear that there seems to be some misunderstandings with when multiplication should be used, because she then went back to using multiplication in question 2b. This led to her incorrectly answering the rest of the questions on the assessment, even though she used the proper steps to solve those problems. Student Cs mistakes and confusion on the quiz tells me a few things. For one thing, student C needs a more developed comprehension of the use of multiplication to calculate a percent, and an understanding of why multiplication works. From her work however, it is apparent that she does have a keen understanding of what a percent is, and what must be done with that percent after it has been calculated, in a real-world situation. Student Cs performance on the quiz also informs me that my assessment was lacking validity. Even though each test question was aligned with one of the learning targets, the issue was that each question built on the last one. This means that if they got the first two questions wrong, they would then get the rest wrong too. So even if students knew the basic strategies needed to answer those questions assessing learning target numbers two and three, their answer would still be marked wrong because they couldnt meet the first learning objective assessed in question 1a and 1b. This was the case with student C. Student C did meet learning objective two and three, but according to her test, it would appear that she did not. This was an error on my part, and an error I did not foresee being a problem until after the assessment was administered. In the future, I will be sure that each individual question works alone in assessing a students ability to meet an objective. To assist student C in moving forward in math, I again provided feedback directly on her assessment. I pointed her attention back up to 1a and questioned how she calculated a percent in that problem. Why did she switch to subtraction? Student C also required some attention on an

individual basis. During small group instruction in class, I pulled her along with a few other students struggling with the same concept. We reviewed what a percent meant (out of 100). We discussed that there were 100 pennies in a dollar. So if the tip was 15%, that would mean that for every 100 pennies, or 1 dollar, there would be an additional 15 pennies added on. That would require us to multiply the number of whole dollars by .15 or 15%. This individual attention really helped Student C gain the understanding required to truly comprehend what it means to calculate a percent of something. An additional post-test was used to ensure that Student C had obtained mastery with calculating percents following this one-on-one attention. III Using Assessment to Inform Instruction After my analysis of the whole-class data, I feel confident in moving on to the next unit. I feel that most of my students have a general understand understanding of how to calculate a percent, and even how to use that percent to determine totals or discounts. The students who are still struggling with some of these concepts received small group or individual instruction to help bring them up to speed. For my whole-class instruction, however, we moved on the next unit, which involved studying patterns and variables in tables, graphs and equations. A short period of time was reserved for reviewing decimal place values, but other than that, I decided to move our whole-class instruction forward. During time segments designated for intervention, I pulled those few students still needing assistance. A short exit slip was used to assess whether or not these students finally met the objectives. Most students were brought up to speed. In order to solidify my students deeper understanding and mastery of this concept, I hope to revisit this topic in the future so that they dont forget the material; and so they gain more experience not only calculating a percent, but also using that information to determine totals after taxes, discounts or tips. The more practice they gain with this material in a real-world context, the more applicable and beneficial it will be for them, and the better they will get at solving problems like these.