Tracey Brown Rice

MTH 610

September 30, 2014

Case Study: Raheem

In Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), I serve as a third grade general

education teacher in a high English as a Second Language school. Within my

classroom, students range in their problem solving abilities from just knowing the

answer to being able to consistently identify mathematical patterns and explicitly

share out their thinking. For this particular case study, I chose my student, who

actively participates and communicates his thinking in whole group, but often,

struggles when working on independent practice. When checking his understanding

one-on-one, it is evident that procedures and strategies of how to solve given content

is understood, as anchor charts are often referred back to; however, there is some

disconnect when having to activate his knowledge on his own. This student is

Raheem (a pseudonym).

For the past few weeks, we have been learning about place value. Within this

broad umbrella, the following topics are included as the raindrops: rounding up to

the thousands place, identifying the value of given digits and manipulatives,

sequencing numbers, and writing numbers in three forms- standard, written (word),

and expanded form. While working on his practice, I noticed that Raheem needed

more guiding questions, so I pulled him to my small group table to work with him
more closely. Initially, I thought it was confidence issue by the inflections in his

voice being that of an unsure tone, but being close to the correct solution. However, I

noticed otherwise at the small group table when changing his practice and giving him

a FCPS assessment question from the Countys online assessment resource, Horizon.

It was here that Raheem had to solve the following problem: A deli made 1,743

sandwiches in one week. What is that number rounded to the nearest hundred

sandwiches?

When solving the Horizon problem, an answer was immediately written. Without

hesitation, Raheem said, I guessed. In response, I reminded Raheem him that

mathematicians never give up and he took a second look followed by making this

statement, I count by tens and writing the number 1,753. This was evident that the

counting strategy of counting by ten was used, showing some rigor in his ability to

think mathematically. To better guide his thinking towards base-tens and identifying

when and how to round, I had Raheem label each digits place value. Here, Raheem

was proficient and knew the procedures of how to label each place value. However,

he really didnt understand their values. Subsequently, I asked him, If you drew a

number line, which hundreds would 1,753 be closest to? He looked puzzled,

thought about it, and then communicated what he did, I counted ten more because

Im rounding to the nearest ten. This showed me that he knew where to look, which

is to the right of the rounding place, to know when to round, but the how was not

understood- he rounded up and increased the wrong digit by one (wrote 1,753

opposed to 1,800).
 When reflecting on chapter 4 in our class text, Young Mathematicians At Work:

Constructing Number Sense, Addition, and Subtraction, I was able to understand my

next steps for reteaching place value to Raheem. Unitizing is cited as the heart or

focal point of place value, as Critical addition and subtraction strategies in relation to

place value are adding or removing units to get to the next ten (p75). To move my

student into the more concrete realm of thinking, more exposure to what rounding

up or rounding down visually looks like is needed. I plan to use more number

lines to help Raheem identify the closet benchmarks when rounding and using

manipulates to shown that when rounding up, you are really estimating and

regrouping- skills that will be revisited in proceeding units and in the higher grades.

In turn, his skip counting/counting in general will strengthen, as he will be able to

locate values on a number line, use the spacing in-between entire benchmark, and

visually check his solution to see if it makes sense. In turn, the chapter too highlights

the relevance of making problems meaningful to students. By better tailoring my

practice problem, more powerful connections and opportunities to connect with the

text most likely will result.

By implementing the above changes to my teaching practice, Raheem will have a

more successful and meaningful year in math. Number lines are manipulatives that

reappear not only when rounding, but in our next unit, adding and subtracting, and

units thereafter. When using the number line and manipulatives, Raheem will move

from his comfort zone of implementing the counting strategy to more rigorous
strategies, to include: derived fact strategy. In turn, more patterns in numbers will be

seen. This will help Raheem make connections and become more fluent in his

mental math string (Fosnot & Dolk, p138) and math string in general.