"Word Problem Clues" Video-2nd Grade
The "Word Problem Clues" video in a 2nd
grade classroom with Tracy Lewis was intriguing to watch. After watching all the videos (planning,
lesson, debrief), it caused me to reflect a lot about different strategies and
approaches to teach students math in order for them to be the most successful.
I appreciated that the students were going back to analyze and change their
work if necessary. This shows that making mistakes is a part of the math
process, and they can learn to go back and read the problem more clearly as well as use
pictures, words, and, labels to help explain their process.
The
Planning:
Ms. Lewis explained that using
pictures, numbers, and words to explain our thinking could be a challenge
especially when trying to relate all of the information together. She describes
that when she picks up a piece of paper to see if a problem is more or less
accurate, she wants to see how they thought about the problem. Without any
information, it’s hard to clear up misconceptions or see if the students
discovered a different strategy/approach to solve the problem.
These students are used to working
with numbers and adding them together. A misconception is that the students
just look at two numbers and simply add them together and think that’s the
answer but then have trouble explaining their answer (If you ask, “Why did you add?,” they don't know). However,
in 2nd grade, these students actually need to start reading
through the problem. The core math idea is using addition and subtraction (up
to 100) to solve word problems. After reading through the problem, students
need to recognize and understand the words (i.e. “more” or “how many”), and
figure out what the problem is asking (i.e. “all together?” or “how many
more?”). The students need to look at the word problem, break it down, and have
some kind of representation (pictures, numbers, and words or a combination).
The goal of this lesson is for Ms.
Lewis to understand what they did/how they thought about the problem and for
students to process/break down their work and analyze it to see if it needs to
be made clearer or needs adjusting. In other words, the goal is to study the
impact of the lesson on student thinking, learning, and understanding. Teachers
should look at: Are students able to identify the math strategy (i.e. addition,
subtraction, etc.) and then are they able to use this strategy effectively? (Is
their process correct? What strategies are they using to solve the problem and
are they using these strategies correctly?)
The focus of this reengagement
lesson is for students to go back and look at their math on the first two words
problems that were discussed as a class as well as review problems 3 and 4 (not
addressed in the reengagement lesson) to see if they can apply what they
learned. The students need to reflect and possibly fix their mistakes/clarify
their work. After this lesson, students
will hopefully understand that they may need to re-work a problem with a
different strategy or modify an existing strategy.
At the carpet, Ms. Lewis explains
that the students are now detectives and they need to look for evidence to
solve math mysteries. She and the students discussed that mathematicians use
evidence, labels, pictures, words, number sentences, and answers. Ms. Lewis
reviewed some students’ previous work, which was displayed on chart paper.
Throughout this reengagement
lesson, Ms. Lewis used the students’ work to emphasize how the numbers,
pictures, words, and answer needs to correlate with one another. In other
words, they all need to support each other; if you drew a picture, words should
explain that picture and the answer should reflect what was shown in the
picture and described in the explanation.
In the first student example (field
trip), the student used numbers and words to explain how they arrived at the
answer. While their answer is correct, the student’s numbers, words, and
explanation did not match with each other. In the second student example (apple
farm), the student subtracted rather than added (maybe they thought the “how many
more” meant adding or maybe they simply saw numbers and added them together (as
mentioned earlier as a misconception)). For the second student example (field
trip), the student used pictures, words, and numbers and got the correct answer
but once again, it was confusing as to how they arrived at their answer; What are
the words describing? (the pictures, words, and numbers didn’t correlate with
each other). In the second student example (apple farm), the student used
pictures, words, and numbers and it seemed to correlate better with each other.
In this problem, the student got the correct answer (realizing that it was
asking for “How many MORE?,” which is a code for subtraction).
At the
carpet, a common theme I noticed throughout the problems was that many students had difficulty
identifying the strategy to use (i.e. addition or subtraction) and then had
trouble explaining why they chose that strategy. I liked how Ms. Lewis took the
time to go through the students’ work and ask the students what they observed.
Rather than telling and showing the students how to correctly solve the
problem, I think that it was valuable to have the students themselves observe,
reflect, think, and discuss errors and successes amongst the student problems.
This self-analysis strategy allows students to understand that errors are okay,
but by working through those mistakes they could get a more accurate answer.
If I were
Ms. Lewis, I probably wouldn’t have had the students sit on the carpet as long
as they did. She could have had them look through the samples of the first
problem, go to their desks to review it with a partner, come back on the rug to
discuss samples of the second problem, and then go to their desks to review it
with a partner. This way, the students would probably be more focused and
engaged because the instruction is alternating between teacher-centered and
student-centered (as opposed to all teacher centered and then student
centered). Despite this suggestion, I thought it was great that the students
were able to use a pen, work with a partner to discuss their work (dyad), and
then make changes or additions to their work right on the paper or on a new
sheet of paper. It was good that the students were able to reflect upon,
share, and verbally explain their strategies to a partner, and see if their
strategy was appropriate. I noticed with one student that when he verbally explained the problem to his partner, he realized a mistake he made and was able to fix it on his paper. Students worked
through problems 1 and 2 as well as 3 and 4. Ms. Lewis and some of the other
observers walked around and interacted with the students one-on-one to aid them
in discussing the strategy they were using and why. I think that ALL students
were able to recognize the importance of going back and revising their work to
make it clearer. However, I think some students still struggled with the idea
of picking the correct strategy and/or explaining why they chose that strategy.
Faculty Debriefing:
During the
debriefing of the lesson, I liked how Ms. Lewis was able to easily identify her
challenges as well as successes. First, she discussed how the lesson did not go
as planned, she ran out of time, and she wanted to dissect more student samples
in order for her students to see different ways to answer the question. Next,
Ms. Lewis discussed some strengths of the lesson. She was pleased with the
students’ level of participation and contribution to share their thinking. It
was nice to see that they were comfortable talking about their own work, even
if it wasn’t perfect. Also, she appreciated how students were able to recognize
and express if they were lost or stuck.
In the
future, Ms. Lewis wants to continue enforcing her students to go beyond the
pictures, words, and numbers and actually start looking at how those things
work together. She wants them to take apart the problem, figure out what the
question is asking, identify the strategy, and be able to explain why they did
what they did. I think her students understand what she is asking: they need to
identify a strategy, show that strategy using words, pictures, and numbers, and
be able to explain what they did. However, I think they got stuck actually employing those strategies; they were either stuck on identifying a strategy and/or explaining their strategy (and I think Ms. Lewis
realized this, too).
As
previously mentioned, Ms. Lewis also wished she could show more student
samples. For instance, she wanted to show one that displayed a number line and
one that used base ten blocks. For future instruction, maybe Ms. Lewis could
show some more of these student samples for students to evaluate and discuss,
and she could further stress that there are various strategies students can use
to solve a problem (as long as the student has evidence-pictures, words, and
numbers-which are aligned with each other, many strategies could be used).
Overall Thoughts:
I think it
was a meaningful learning experience to have students go back and analyze their
work. Ms. Lewis promoted a respectful learning environment (it was okay for
students to make mistakes and she wanted to help guide them through how to
correct their mistakes). I also liked that the poster samples were anonymous so
no student could judge another student for their work.
I found it
interesting that even after Ms. Lewis’s reengagement lesson, the students still
had difficulties breaking apart the word problems. After reading and discussing the problems as
a whole-class, many students still thought you just add the numbers together that
you see. I also was captivated at the one-on-one work with Ms. Lewis and one of
her female students when working through the pen problem. Even though Ms. Lewis
tried explaining through verbal and physical explanations, this student still
struggled identifying that she needed to subtract rather than add. I noticed
this with some of the other students as well. This showed me that maybe Ms.
Lewis needed to modify her method of instruction (instead of asking the same
questions (i.e. How much more?), maybe she needed to provide more sample
problems the students could work through as a class and then have them dissect
their work). I felt Ms. Lewis sometimes repeated the same questions and wanted
her students to understand it so badly, but when they didn’t understand it, she
often still repeated the question rather than altering her instruction. Also, this
showed me that breaking down a problem may be harder for students than it
appears, but it’s worthwhile for students to do because they are learning to
work through the process. In other words, I feel so many teachers give students
a problem but don’t have students analyze and explain the strategies they are
using. Even though some of the students were struggling, it was amazing that
they were able to self-reflect and determine what they could change/add to
improve the accuracy of their work. I believe understanding why
is a key part of education, and if students don’t understand why (i.e. Why did
you add? Why did you subtract?), then they are missing out on a good chunk of
their learning process.
Hopefully Ms. Lewis will continue
to guide her students in breaking down word problems so they can grow and
develop in their thinking and understand/explain why they did what they did. In
addition, I hope to implement self-reflecting strategies in my future classroom
and providing opportunities for students to be able to explain their
strategies.
Very thorough and excellent job! Thanks:)
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