Weekly Clinical Reflections

Entry 1-Wednesday, February 8th

Today I observed Mrs. Muhammads 5th grade math class at Nathaniel Alexander Elementary
School. The focus of todays lesson was multiplying decimals. Mrs. Muhammad began the
lesson with a warm up of multiplying whole numbers. The students were instructed to complete
the warm-up by using the standard algorithm only. She explained that if the students struggled
with the standard algorithm, they would also struggle with todays lesson. After the warm-up,
she began the lesson. She instructed the students to turn their papers horizontally, create 4 boxes
and leave room at the bottom of each box. In each box, she gave a step of multiplying decimals
and at the bottom of each box, there was an example of that step. The four steps were:
estimate-the students rounded each decimal to the nearest whole number and then multiplied
those two numbers to get an estimate of what their final product should look like,
remove-moving the decimal point to the end of the number to create whole numbers, multiply-
the two numbers like normal and put the decimal point back in and then check-does the product
make sense? Was it close to the estimate? She did a couple of problems with the students and
then gave them a worksheet and asked them to do a few on their own. During this time, I worked
with a student who needs extra attention. I kept him focused during the lesson see what shes
writing on the board? Can you copy that onto your paper? and then I assisted him during
independent practice, walking him through the steps.

After the lesson of the day, the students have about 20 or so minutes for intervention where they
review and practice skills from a previous lesson or unit. Today, they were working on volume.
The students were split into three groups. One group used the chromebooks to play volume based
games online. Another group had a worksheet that asked them to find the area of the given box,
the area of the given piece of candy and then asked how many pieces of candy could fit into that
box. The third group worked with Mrs. Muhammad where she reviewed with them how to find
the volume of a complex figure. I spent this time working with the students who were working
on the worksheet. They were confused by what the question was really asking them to find.
Another issue they had was that the dimensions of the candy were 2x2x2, and they thought this
was 6. I had to help them work it out by using the associative property. I asked whats two
times two? to which they told me four, and then I said Whats two times four? to which they
replied eight. However, even after doing this, I had one student tell me that he didnt believe
me and that I was wrong, so I had to show him again why it worked out that way.

Some phrases that I heard today that I wanted to document include: This is hard content, and if
you put your head down and act like you cant learn it, then you wont. But, if you look like
youre ready to learn, then you will learn. and You should already know your times tables.
That is a third grade skill, I dont have time to go back and teach you something you should
already know, so youre going to have to find a way to learn those facts.

Math was my favorite block today, its the only class where I was able to be hands on with the
students and assist. When Mrs. Muhammad saw me assisting the student who needed extra help,
she said to the TA who was in the room at the time: Ms. Owens doesnt know it yet but shes
going to have to come every day, at least from 12-1:45!
Entry 2-Wednesday, February 15th
Standards Covered: 5.NBT.7

Today Mrs. Muhammads class started with the following warm up: A theater seats 985 people.
There are 7 performances weekly. How many people could see the performance in 2 weeks? As
she went around to look at everyones paper, she had to say try again a lot. Just because
weve been focusing on decimals this week, that doesnt mean that the warm up is going to be on
decimals. It can be on anything weve covered this year. Read the problem, think about what it is
asking you to find. This is how youll have to solve word problems on the EOG (she references
the EOG a lot and mentions how the students have to know how to do things because theyll be
on the EOG. I know that the test is important but its important they know that its not the only
reason why they should know and understand how to do math problems-in my personal opinion).
When she was going over the problem, she started by drawing two blocks and drew a 7 in each
of them. 7 to represent the number of days in the week and two blocks to represent how many
weeks the performance took place (equal groups!!) and then used the standard algorithm to
multiply 985 by 14 to find the total number of people who could see the performance.

Following the warm-up, Mrs. Muhammad did a review problem from the topic covered the day
before: dividing a decimal by a whole number. There are three steps to these types of problems:
ignore the decimal, divide as usual, move the decimal up (this means wherever it is in the house,
move it straight up so that it is in the same spot in the quotient).

After this, we began new content: dividing a decimal by a decimal. Mrs. Muhammad had the
students make a chart that shows the 4 steps to solving these types of problems (see the chart I
made below!) While I made my chart and solved the problems, I also watched my friend who
needs extra attention, lets call him Dave, to make sure he was following along with Mrs.
Muhammad, but he was very good and on task today. She handed out a worksheet and the class
did a couple problems together. She gave the students some time to work on a couple problems
and then put the answers on the board so the students could check their work. She assigned 4
problems on the worksheet to be done as homework.

There was basically no time for intervention today because it was class picture day. The students
had 5 minutes to log onto their chromebook and check what grade they made on their
intervention test. (I dont know if these are for an actual grade or just for Mrs. Muhammad to see
how theyre improved/who still needs extra help). I dont know how the students did overall, but
as I was walking around helping hand out Valentines candy, I heard one student say aww man,
I failed.
Something Ive noticed about this class so far is that they have trouble with word problems. They
seem to be able to solve well when they know what theyre expected to do, but figuring out
which operation to use is hard for them. A lot of them had trouble on the warm up because they
werent sure what was being asked of them. Additionally, last week, everyone in the intervention
group I worked with struggled with the word problem about the box. They found the volume of
the box and of a piece of candy but when asked how many pieces of candy can fit into the box
they just didnt understand how to find that answer.
Entry 3- Wednesday, February 22nd
Standard Covered: 5.NBT.5

As always, Mrs. Muhammads class started with a warm-up: A bracelet that costs $11.26 was
marked down to $9.38. How much was the bracelet marked down? Some students had trouble
figuring out which operation to use. Mrs. Muhammad kept asking, what happens when
something is marked down? The student she called on was successful in solving the problem for
the class.

After the warm-up, Mrs. Muhammad asked if students had questions about the homework and
went over a couple of the problems. The problems on the homework were questions from
previous, released EOGs. There were only 3 problems on the homework and the topics included
multiplying fractions, writing decimals in expanded form and ordering decimals from least to
greatest. She assigned the next 3 problems on the sheet as homework for Wednesday night. I
know I said on my last reflection that I dont think the idea of drilling the EOG into students is a
great idea, but I do think this is good practice. EOGs are designed to get students to think
critically and they should have some practice working with the types of questions theyll see on
the tests so that they dont get confused and can figure out what the problem is asking.

Afterward, she handed out their new Ready Workbooks which contain exercises the students will
do throughout the end of the year to review content before the EOG. They practiced using grids
to multiply and divide decimals. Its an interesting concept, especially for students who have
been struggling using the standard algorithm and for those who learn better visually. However, it
would only work for smaller numbers, for example, 16.5 x 2 would be difficult because youd
have to shade in 16 whole grids, and half of another grid, twice! But this might be helpful for
numbers under 5 in my opinion.

Finally, we moved into intervention. Todays topic was multiplying and dividing whole
numbers. Students were put into groups based on the scores they earned on their test at the
beginning of the year. Group A worked on a higher level thinking worksheet, Group B worked in
a small group with Mrs. Muhammad and Group C worked on problems on a math problem on
the ChromeBooks. I stuck with Group A and monitored their work. Their computing skills are on
par, however, they struggled with choosing the correct operation for the problem (a common
theme). The problem was something along the lines of Rose gets 1 point for every 4 raffle
tickets she sells. If she sells 361 raffle tickets, how many points does she earn? All the students
multiplied 361 x 4 and I had to talk them through it. I said does she get a point for each raffle
ticket? No, she gets 1 point for every 4. Once I worded it like that, they said oh, so we have to
divide? I dont know if they came to that answer because I told them to relook at the problem or
because they actually understood it. In addition, I dont know if the students just get so caught up
in wanting to finish their worksheet because they want to get on the ChromeBooks that they
dont actually take the time to read the problem carefully or if they all just really struggle with
interpreting word problems. In addition, this problem had a remainder which really threw all of
them off. I tried to explain that the remainder doesnt affect the answer in this case, you just
discard the remainder, she gets 1 point for each raffle ticket, she doesnt get part of a point. But,
they just couldnt really comprehend that, which is understandable, they might not have covered
the different things a remainder can mean at this point in their academic careers. When I asked
Mrs. Muhammad about it, she said, yeah, its supposed to be higher level thinking. I hoped
theyd come to that conclusion on their own.
Entry #4-Wednesday, March 15th
Standards Covered: 5.G.1

The warm-up in Mrs. Muhmmads math class today was the following problem: The soccer
team served sports drinks after the game. of the bottles had orange drink. as many had grape
drink. What fraction of the bottles had grape drink? Many students had trouble solving this
problem because they werent sure how to go about solving it. Mrs. Muhammad had to guide
them to the write answer by asking questions such as what does as many mean and what if it
said had orange drink and the remainder had grape drink, how would you solve it then. She
emphasized that the students had to improve on reading the problem for key number facts and
phrases that would lead them towards which operation to use to solve the problem.

Todays lesson focused on graphing ordered pairs on a coordinate plane. This concept wasnt
brand new to the students because in lower grades they had worked with plotting points in
quadrant 1. However, this is the first time theyve worked with all four quadrants. Mrs.
Muhammad started by drawing a coordinate plane and the students followed along by doing the
same in their notes. She labeled and x-axis and the y-axis for the students and identified the point
(0,0) as the origin. She then went on to label the quadrants as 1, 2, 3 and 4 in counterclockwise
order and then put (+,+) in quadrant 1, (-,+) in 2, (-,-) in 3 and (+,-) in 4. These are meant to
represent the values of the x-value and y-value in the ordered pair.

After taking notes, the students were given a worksheet. On the front of the worksheet, there
were different types of problems and a coordinate plane with points that were labeled: A, B, C,
and on. On the first type of problem, students were given an ordered pair and asked to find the
letter of this point. The second type of problem gave students an ordered pair and then asked the
student to plot the point on the plane and label it with the given letter. The third type of problem
gave the letter and the students were asked to write the ordered pair of where the point was
located.

After doing a few examples of each problem and allowing the students to try some of their own,
Mrs. Muhammad had the students turn the worksheet to the back. On the back of the worksheet
were four blank coordinate planes. Mrs. Muhammad explained that on the EOG, they will be
given four points and then asked to identify what shape these four points make. She then gave
them ordered pairs to graph so that they could try their hand at this skill.

During the worksheet activities I helped students plot points and checked their work, most
specifically my friend, Dave. He had a few misconceptions at first. For example, he would look
at the y-axis first when plotting points. Then another problem he had was in terms of positives
and negatives. I kept having to remind him to look at the value before trying to plot the points.
He finally got the hang of plotting the points, but he had to draw lines to help him find where to
plot the point. This was a problem when he had to identify the shape that the points created. We
compromised and he drew his lines, but he erased them after plotting the point. I saw a lot of
improvement in him in just one day!
Entry #5-Wednesday, March 29th
Standards Covered: 5.G.1-5.G.4; 5.OA.1

Todays warmup was the following problem: Linda bought 3 notebooks for $1.20 each, 2 boxes
of pencils for $1.50 each and a box of pens for $1.70. How much did Linda spend? Mrs.
Muhammad told the students that she expected them to write just one number sentence for this
problem which prompted them to create number sentences using parentheses. I didnt quite find
out whether the students are learning order of operations for the first time just now or if they
covered it at the beginning of the year and are reviewing it now, but since it is one of the very
first standards, I would predict that they are reviewing content from the very beginning to
prepare for the EOG.

Mrs. Muhammad then told the students that today would be a review day for their test tomorrow
which would cover shapes, coordinate planes and conversions such as length, weight and time.
What better way to review for a test than a game of Jeopardy? Mrs. Muhammed informed the
students that there would be 6 teams.and she would pick team captains who would then pick
their teams. As soon as I heard this, a red alarm went off in my head: TEAM CAPTAINS AND
PICKING TEAMS IS A HORRIBLE IDEA BECAUSE SOMEONE HAS TO GET PICKED
LAST. I was practically biting my nails as the team captains picked their teams (she did pick my
friend Dave to be a captain though, which made him very happy) and then we were to the very
last kid and the rest of the students laughed at him which would have made me sad anyway but
he was already having a very bad day so that really bothered me. Mrs. Muhammad handled it
well I think but I also feel like it brought more attention to him than he wanted in that moment.
She said Is there a problem here? I dont understand whats happening here. Every single one of
you in here has had someone laugh at you and make you feel bad so none of you should be
laughing right now. I dont have disrespect in my classroom, thats not welcome here. The
looks on their faces, you can tell they felt ashamed of what they had done, but I still felt bad for
him. Even as I type this a day later I still feel bad. Anyway, I know that wasnt about math but it
was a teachable moment and I had to write about it.

So, jeopardy. The rules: captains are in charge of picking the category and the value they wanted
to go for, the captain was responsible for writing the answer on the whiteboard but they could
choose to pick someone else to do this job or they could choose to take turns (most actually took
turns) and correct answers earn points BUT wrong answers lose points. The categories were
geometry, coordinate plane, order of operations, conversions and hodge podge which could be on
anything that they had learned in the 5th grade. I didnt actually write any of the questions down
(sorry!) because the whole time I was walking around and observing the students work in their
groups to solve the problems. But I will tell you, some of those problems were hard, if I was
solving those problems myself I would have to sit down with pencil and paper for a couple
minutes. Not all the questions were problems though, some focused more on the concepts. A
couple off the top of my head were which quadrant has negative values for both the x and the
y, is a trapezoid a parallelogram and even what are two ways we classify triangles.

Overall, jeopardy went pretty well so I think the students are going to do pretty well on their test!
They also did a good job with collaborating and working together, although a couple groups did
get frustrated when they got questions wrong.

Overall, I had a great time in Mrs. Muhammads class these past few weeks. Her math class is
the place I felt most welcome because she encouraged me to help the students from the very first
week. Im nobody to evaluate the quality of instruction but I can honestly say that if I was a
student in her class, I would not have trouble learning the material because she teaches very
similarly to what Im used to from growing up. Very direct, which I know isnt the style we
focus on in ELED 3224 but its a very comfortable place for me. Hopefully I will be with a
teacher for my YLI who teaches math more indirectly so I can see both styles firsthand! I was
very nervous about 5th grade when I first received my placement, however, after these few
weeks I have realized that neither the students, nor the content is that scary and I will miss my
class very, very much.