Professional Documents
Culture Documents
No marathon runner starts without the finish line firmly in his mind. Though the bodily
conditioning appears to be the most essential training, mental preparation ultimately proves
more valuable. Knowledge of his route affords the runner the ability to train more effectively
with the route as his minds only goal, he understands areas where his pace can be strained and
where extra care must be taken. Although the connection to teaching may not be immediately
clear, the teacher must go through similar preparation to effectively plan a unit. Taking time to
deeply analyze connections between mathematical ideas allows the teacher to weave a clear
storyline resulting in understanding and mastery. Like the knowledge of the marathons route,
teacher with the ability to identify problematic ideas and designate extra time to those areas.
By reflecting on planning practices across two units, I identified ways in which my planning has
evolved to more effectively meet the needs of students within my classroom: these three main
areas are the nature of the lessons, versatility with the storyline, and the assessment of student
understanding.
Some attention must be given to the process which I employed since planning both
units involved an identical procedure despite the varied results. First, I identified the broad
mathematical category to explore while identifying the necessary corresponding Common Core
State Standards; for example, the first unit focuses on polynomial functions while the second
attends to exponential functions. Before planning a single lesson, I designed a summative
assessment in line with the standards I hoped to address. Using the assessment as a guide along
concepts needed to successfully complete the assessment. Constructing the bridges revealed
the location of each concept within the unit facilitating the assembly of the mathematical
The most significant evolution in my unit planning regards a fundamental shift in the
nature of individual lessons throughout the unit. The planning and implementation of the tasks
in my first unit plan did not result in low-cognitive demand activities; however, since the tasks
reinforced the importance of observations, the students passively engaged with the actual
mathematics. On the other hand, my final unit plan incorporated tasks in which the students
necessarily constructed their own structures to unpack the meaning of the mathematical
concepts. Although the difference between observation and inquiry may seem like an asinine
conclusions about new mathematical phenomena using mastered material. For example, both
the Angry Birds Task and One of Many Ways (see intern page for activities) required students to
graph functions using a calculator and use observations about those graphs to determine how
different values affect the function before arriving at generalized transformation equation.
Although deduction is an important mathematical skill consistent with abstract reasoning, the
students did not possess enough previous mathematical knowledge of the functions to reach
deeper conclusions. Ultimately, students failed to dig deeper into the functions and focused on
surface level characteristics of the graph. As described in my reflection on CS2, One of Many
Ways helped students generalize about the connection between the number of real zeros and
the degree of the polynomial, but I introduced the notion of complex zeros as pairs (see CS2
Video Clip 2). I understood where the observations fit with the mathematical storyline of the
unit; however, students struggled to see the significance of such observations. In turn, the
observations actually impaired the progress of the unit for a time as students needed to build a
The lessons present in the final unit plan reflect my new focus on inquiry-based lessons.
Students prior experiences with exponential functions had been minimal and did not focus on
the algebraic representation in-depth if at all. Therefore, lessons were designed for students to
employ previous mathematical content knowledge and skills to make sense of contextual
situations and arrive at solutions with new results. For example, The Disease Wont Stop
Growing! challenged students to use the described situation to create a function that could be
used to predict the growth of the disease. Unlike the first unit plan which featured students
generalizing functions without exploring their mathematical structure, this lesson required
students to use their knowledge of increase and exponents to reach a generalized form. The
final question on the activity was written to assess how effectively the nature of the task
facilitated the generalization. Analyzing student artifacts revealed students consistently used
the fact an infected person infected four new people to multiply the previous days case by four;
then breaking down the total number into its factors revealed the connection between the day
number and the number of times the factor appeared. After students completed this work, the
Instead of trying to retroactively generalize the form like my first units lessons, inquiry allowed
During the process of designing the first unit, I concentrated much of my energy on a
logical flow of mathematical ideas. Obviously building each idea of the successive idea remains
an integral part of the discipline of mathematics; however, such absorption into the linear flow
of the topics overshadowed the connections I drew between mathematical concepts. Since
Heibert & Carpenter (1992) argue that more connections between mathematical ideas
represents greater understanding, I must have demonstrated deep connections between major
however, my strong conceptual understanding of the content did not transfer to a strong inter-
connected presentation of the content for the students (see UP Storyline). Instead, the
connections simply built a foundation facing one way the degree determines the number of
zeros and the signs determine which are real or imaginary rather than linking back to building
functions from the zeros as well. In the study on concept mapping, Williams (1998) observe that
the variance between the experts and students concept maps largely reflects the difference in
the depth of content knowledge. The linear design of the unit ensured the students
Although the procedure for designing both units remained identical, reflecting on the
first unit facilitated an evolution in the flexibility of the mathematical storyline for the second
unit. Even though the concept map did not feature the extensive connection of my first unit
plan, the map facilitated a valuable divergence in the storyline. Instead of using my own
concept knowledge to map desired connections among concepts, I used a student lens to
identify the kind of connections I wanted students to make among concepts throughout the
unit and ultimately on the assessment. Teachers commonly write lessons with conceptual
connections consistent with their own knowledge base; since students lack the same expertise,
the lesson fails to reach its end goal. Using the student lens avoided this pitfall, present in the
first unit plan, and provided multiple routes through which concepts could be bridged (see UPR
Storyline). In turn, I rearranged lessons as the unit progressed to tailor around the
understanding students were developing. For example, the notion of percent growth was
pushed back until the second day to insure students grasped the structure of exponential
growth. I also switched the order of same-base equations and compounded interest so
students could better grasp the notion of compounded-ness. Such versatility in the unit is only
possible when the teacher possesses expert knowledge, but approaches the math with student
thinking in mind.
typical short answer test: each problem assessed a single lesson objective. However,
assessments should emulate the type of work which occurred during the unit and so assessing a
single objective at a time did not suit my final unit plan. Instead, I constructed an assessment
which adhered to the mathematical flow of the unit. Matching the nature of the assessment
a traditional short answer test (use UP Assessment as reference). Each question assessed the
storyline. Although asking the students to choose the correct graph given a set of zeros and
explain why the certain set was chosen allowed students to work between concepts, the overall
whole did not represent the intricate connections established during the daily lessons.
Furthermore, students engaged in higher-order thinking about the connections between topics
on a daily basis; however, the assessment did not allow students to demonstrate the wealth of
understanding choosing instead to focus on skills. Without the type of student thinking as the
focal point, my assessment failed to allow students to express multiple connections between
the various ideas, facts, and procedures (Hiebert & Carpenter 1992, Sisofo 2010). As a result,
the average percentage on the assessment was 81 percent. The thinking generated by the daily
lessons must reside in the assessment or students do not have an adequate opportunity to
During the planning of my final unit, I created each lesson as an extension of part of the
assessment. Even though the concept map seems sparser than in my first unit, the connections
are not only solid, but also within the students context. Using a conceptually deeper mapping,
the lessons were designed to reflect the context driven assessment. Since the lessons required
students to instill their own mathematical structures to problems in order to reach solutions,
daily lessons reinforced this principle. Clearly, traditional assessment formats do not provide
opportunities for students to demonstrate such understanding effectively. Therefore, the new
assessment was delivered as a project to be worked on in class with a single partner. Upon
completion, the pairs generated concept maps of their own explaining how each connection
helped solve the problems in the project. Although concept mapping cannot differentiate
between subtle levels of understanding, qualitative analysis of the concept map can provide
information about student understanding not necessarily possible with a traditional test
(Williams 1998). Using the mapping as framework, I effectively traced the lines of reasoning for
the majority of groups. Although some holes existed regarding concepts such as negative
exponential growth, the overall achievement ranked much higher than the first unit: 93 percent
classroom average (across four classrooms). Such achievement is only possible when the
assessment is written in such a way that students can readily express the conceptual knowledge
improvement still exist in regards to my own knowledge resources. Though I possess strong
bridging one concept to another; these bridges then construct the foundation for ways in which
I can guide students through mathematical concepts over the course of a unit. Essentially the
content knowledge provides the airways for which the unit breathes while teachable content
knowledge is the oxygen giving life to the process. Creating an effective mathematical storyline
truly is an assessment of how much I understand about teaching the content I know so well. As
I improve in this area, the mathematical storylines will become more versatile and inter-
connected.
conceptual knowledge; however, towers are often easily affected by the elements and I am
aiming for deep conceptual understanding for all students. As a result, I am learning a linear
concepts one-at-a-time, students are constantly reforming and realigning beliefs about
mathematics and it is necessary to aid the process if understanding is the goal. As students
and explain the importance of previous topics at this point. I already view mathematics as a
wonderfully intricate structure; however, students may not yet hold such a view do to gaps in
understanding. Instead of mapping the storyline to a linear function, the storyline is much more
previous topics.
Thinking critically about the unit planning process has revealed my progress regarding
the nature of mathematical tasks, flexibility with the mathematical storyline, and my
my quest for further growth in areas where the progress has been limited. Planning a unit
requires significant understanding of how the concepts intersect with one another in order to
weave a clear and concise thread throughout the whole. This preparation affords opportunities
to think critically about the ways in which students may respond to different mathematical
ideas. Such as the ocean, my teaching practice is an ever-changing face with much more
concealed beneath its depths unit planning is only one of these facets, but it has proved
Works Cited
Hiebert, J.; Carpenter, T. P. (1992). Learning and teaching with understanding. Handbook of
Sisofo, E. J. (2010). Evaluating the effects of lesson study as a way to help student teachers
learn how to use student thinking when planning and revising mathematics