Modified Task 4 Assignment 

Fall 2017 MAED 3224 

  
Section A: Context for Learning 
1. Grade level: 3rd 

2. How much time is devoted each day to mathematics instruction in your classroom? 

An hour and ten minutes is devoted to mathematics instruction. 

3. Identify any textbook or instructional program the teacher uses for mathematics instruction. 
If a textbook, please provide the title, publisher, and date of publication. 

The students do not use a specific textbook, however, all of the students do use the i-ready 
math program. 

4. From your observations, list other resources (e.g., electronic whiteboard, manipulatives, 
online resources) the teacher uses for mathematics instruction in this class. Provide one 
example of how a resource was used to teach a concept.  

The resources in the classroom consist of electronic whiteboard, whiteboard spaces on the wall 
for all of the students, fraction circles, base ten blocks, and markers. Everyday the students are 
tasked with practicing a problem using their whiteboard spaces around the room. Recently, the 
students were covering equivalent fractions and the teacher gave the students a fraction such 
as 3/6 and then the students were able to on their whiteboard spaces right more equivalent 
fractions and show their thinking with pictures.   

5. From your observations, explain how your teacher makes sure the students learn the 
standard/objectives conceptually giving a specific example.  

The teacher within the classroom focuses heavily on the gradual release model of I do, You do, 
We do. She uses three e’s instead of five e’s. She focuses heavily on modeling and then 
allowing the students to practice the problem independently to show their understanding. One 
example would be when the students were learning equivalent fractions. She first modeled to 
the students how to find equivalent fractions then they did one together. Following this they 
were tasked with solving equivalent fractions on their whiteboard spaces and a review was 
followed where misconceptions were addressed. 

6. What did you learn most about teaching mathematics from observing this teacher? I learned 
how important it is to give the students opportunities to practice the math concepts before 
sending them away to do it on their own. It is through practice the students become more 
familiar with the concepts and where the teacher is able to assess their understanding. This will 
help to guide further instruction and develop the students’ understanding.   

 
Section B: Whole Class Lesson 
Meet with your IMB teacher and decide what you will teach. Make sure your teacher 
understands that your lesson must have a conceptual understanding instruction along with both 
procedural fluency and problem solving components. You teach just one lesson. 
 
1. Describe the Central Focus of your lesson (a description of the important understandings 
and core concepts that students will develop with this lesson).   

Within this lesson the students will solve one step word problems involving masses or volumes. 
Throughout this lesson the students will understand the difference between grams and 
kilograms as well as liters and millimeters. The students will be given different word problems 
where they will need to identify which operation must be used to solve the word problem The 
important understanding will be able to identify what operations is needed for one step word 
problems that involve masses and volumes.  

2. State the CCSSM Standard and the objective for your whole class lesson.  

3.MD.A.2​ Measure and estimate liquid volumes and masses of objects using 
standard units of grams (g), kilograms (kg), and liters (l).​1​ Add, subtract, multiply, or 
divide to solve one-step word problems involving masses or volumes that are given 
in the same units, e.g., by using drawings (such as a beaker with a measurement 
scale) to represent the problem. 
 
3. Instructional Strategies and Learning Tasks: (summarize the lesson plan components by 
briefly describing the instruction and the learning tasks you used. Include the tasks students will 
solve during the lesson.)   

Within the lesson the students will spend time using their CUBE strategy to solve one step word 
problems involving liters and masses. In the explore portion of the lesson, the students will be 
given three different word problems which they will independently solve as I assess them 
informally. The students will be solving these problems using their whiteboard spaces which will 
allow for me to check their understanding while also giving them the support of their peers as 
they work through these new problems. When the students come back together we will explore 
one of the problems involving addition. The problem will be, “A chimpanzee weighs 52 kg. A 
zebra weighs 408 kg. What is the combined weight of the two animals?” We will address what 
the problem is asking, what operation is needed, the justification for that operations, and then 
how to solve the problem. The answer is 460 kg. Following this, the students will be tasked with 
independently answering another one step word problem involving division. 

4. Create a formative assessment that assesses conceptual knowledge, procedural fluency, 

and problem solving. I​ nsert a copy of the assessment with your solutions here.   
Solutions: 32/4=​8 

5. Define your evaluation criteria for mastery of the assessment in a rubric. Make sure you 
define separately conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and problem solving parts of 
this rubric, including the corresponding points. ​Insert this rubric here.  

Students are expected to receive an 8 out of 10 for mastery. The students will receive 5 point for 
their answer which is the procedural fluency. If the students are able to adequately solve the 
problem then it illustrates that they are able to understand what procedures are needed and do 
it fluently. The students will receive 3 points for writing the equations which is the problem 
solving. If the students are able to identify which operation is needed then it illustrates their 
ability to problem solve. The students will receive 2 points for the picture that they draw. This 
will illustrate conceptual understanding as it shows how the students understood the problem 
within their head.   

  
Section C: Results of Whole Class Assessment 
1. Create a graphic showing class performance of conceptual understanding, procedural 
fluency, and problem solving of the objective. This can be pie charts, tables, bar graph etc. but 
must show performance in each of the above areas separately, according to each student’s 
performance in the formative assessment. 
 
Student  Conceptual  Problem Solving  Procedural  Total 
Understanding  Fluency 

1  2  3  5  10 

2  2  3  5  10 
 3  2  3  5  10 

4  2  3  5  10 

5  0  3  5  8 

6  0   1  1  2 

7  0  2  3  5 

8  0  2  3  5 

9  0  2  3  5 

10  2  3  5  10 

11  2  3  5  10 

12  2  3  5  10 

13  0  0  0  0 

14  0  2  3  5 

15  0  3  5  8 

16  0  2  3  5 

17  2  3  4  9 

18  0  3  4  6 

19  2  3  5  10 
 
 
2. Describe common error patterns in each of the areas of patterns of learning- conceptual 
understanding, and procedural fluency. Refer to graphic to support your discussion. 
 
Within problem solving the students are expected to illustrate that they understand what 
operation is needed to solve the word problem. This is where the students showed the greatest 
struggle in solving the question. It was a word problem that needed division in order to find the 
answer. Many of the students confused this with multiplication and repeated addition. When the 
students were informally assessed through the explore portion of the lesson the students 
showed a similar problem. However, they were brought back together and were re-engaged with 
strategies in order to find what operation was needed for a problem and how to solve correctly. 
The students appeared to have a better understanding yet they seemed to confuse what was 
needed to solve the problem correctly. They all understood that the numbers needed to be 
broken down but they struggled to comprehend which numbers and in what way. 
 
For the conceptual understanding the students are expected to show a picture thus illustrating 
the understanding of the problem that is within their head. For the most part the students 
received all or half points for conceptual understanding. If a student failed to receive any points 
it was simply because they failed to produce a drawing to show their understanding. All of the 
students who did complete the picture normally had the same one. They did a drawing where 
they separated the number into four equal groups. This was an accurate way to show division 
which the problem asked for. However, many of the students showed that they did not 
understand conceptually Within the conceptual understanding the students for the most part 
showed the same picture but simply had the wrong answers within them. The students all drew 
circles to represent the problem. However, they drew the circles as if for multiplication or 
repeated addition instead of breaking it down for division.  
 
The expectation for procedural fluency is that the students will find the correct answer to the 
problem which will be eight. In terms of procedural fluency, all of the students except for two 
completed the word problem accurately for how they understood it. Although they did get the 
questions wrong, the students who used repeated addition or multiplication to solve their 
problems solved it correctly. However, they did not have the conceptual understanding of what 
the question asked of them. The students who did solve the word problem correctly, similarly, 
showed the correct equation and solved it correctly,  
 
3. Scan and insert here the copies of​ 2 students​ first work samples as follows. Choose the 
most representative examples from the whole class assessment (​no student names​). Then, 
analyze each student’s misconceptions. 
 
Student 1 Mathematics Work Sample (​ student struggles with conceptual understanding) 

 
  
This student struggled conceptually to understand the problem. The student drew a picture on 
the back where she wrote out seven days and then put four liters of water into each day. At the 
end, the student basically multiplied four times seven to get her answer of 28 liters of water. 
On the page she also has the extra four liters to presumably make 32. Based on my 
assessment of the student, it appears that the student had the same misconceptions as many 
other students in thinking that it was a multiplication problems rather than division. 
Furthermore, the student appeared to think the problem expanded over the course of a week 
rather than four days. The student appears to do the problem backwards. If she had counted 
the groups then she would have had 7 which would be close to the answer however she 
counted how many was in each group instead which is how she got 28.  
Student 2 Mathematics Work Sample (​ student struggles with procedural fluency or problem  
solving) 

 
The student struggled with both procedural fluency and problem solving within this problem. 
The student appears to understand that the problem calls for division, however, he uses 
multiplication to solve his problem. Illustrating that he does not understand what the problem is 
asking of him and how to execute it properly. Furthermore, the student did not multiply correctly, 
they are off by four showing that they still struggle with procedural fluency.  
  
Section D: Plan for Re-Engagement 
Assessment results are irrelevant if you do not act on them. Thus, you are to create a plan to 
use the results you described in Part C. You do not have to actually re-engage the students but 
you must show that you understand what to do with these results. Thus, based on the 
assessment results you described above, group each of your students into one of these groups:  
Group 1 - re-engage for conceptual 
Group 2 - re-engage for procedural  
Group 3 - re-engage for problem solving 
Group 4 - mastery/ready to move on 
1. Describe the number of students you will have in each of these groups. (Note: if a child 
performed poorly in multiple parts of the assessment, that child will start in the conceptual 
group) There will be 11 students in group 4 who achieved mastery and are ready to move on. 
There will be 4 students in group 1 who will be re-engaged for conceptual understanding. There 
will be 2 students in group 2 for procedural. There will be 8 students in group 3 for a 
re-engagement for problem solving.  
  
2. Plan to re-engage for conceptual understanding. 
a. Describe your re-engagement lesson for this group (objective from CCSSM, learning 
tasks, strategies, materials, assessment). The students within this group will solve one 
step word problems involving masses and liters. For this lesson, I would present the 
group with about three word problems. An example of a word problem would be, “Taylor 
picks 6 kilograms of potatoes everyday. How many kilograms of potatoes will she have 
after 6 six days?” All of them would be either multiplication or division because based on 
my informal assessments this is what the students struggled best with understanding. 
As we are working through the problems the students will have their white boards and be 
drawing pictures to show their understanding. As the misconceptions are seen they will 
be brought up and addressed. We will focus heavily on determining what the question is 
asking and what operation is needed.   
b. Explain why you believe this re-engagement lesson will be effective based on the 
error patterns you found in the data. Score here will be based on how well you describe 
the connection to the re-engagement lesson and the error patterns found, effective use 
of materials, and sound methodology. This will be the most effective because based on 
the data the students were able to successfully complete whatever operation they 
thought the problem was asking, however, their greatest struggled resided in 
determining that operation. It will be through practice and visually seeing the problem 
with their white boards that the students will be given the tools to correct this for the 
future. 
c. Explain how you will reassess for mastery of the concept. Ayden has 70 grams of 
sugar. If he uses 10 grams everyday when will he run out of sugar? 
  
Choose to do either 3a OR 3b: 
 
3a. Plan to Re-engage for procedural understanding. 
a. Describe your re-engagement lesson for this group (objective from CCSSM, learning 
tasks, strategies, materials, assessment). (​ one paragraph) 
b. Explain why you believe this re-engagement lesson will be effective based on the 
error patterns you found in the data. Score here will be based on how well you describe 
the connection to the re-engagement lesson and the error patterns found, effective use 
of materials, and sound methodology. (​ 1-2 sentences) 
c. Explain how you will reassess for mastery of the concept. ​(exit ticket) 
  
3b. Plan to Re-engage for problem solving. 
a. Describe your re-engagement lesson for this group (objective from CCSSM, learning 
tasks, strategies, materials, assessment). The students in this re-engagement lesson will 
solve one step word problems. These word problems will utilize all four of the 
operations. Throughout the lesson the students will be given word problems and tasked 
with the problem of finding the operation and justifying it. Based on the data, this is what 
the students struggled the most with in word problems. The lesson will not focus on 
solving the word problem simply identifying and using strategies to identify what the 
problem is asking.   
b. Explain why you believe this re-engagement lesson will be effective based on the 
error patterns you found in the data. Score here will be based on how well you describe 
the connection to the re-engagement lesson and the error patterns found, effective use 
of materials, and sound methodology. Based on the data the students need the most 
support in finding what operation is needed within a problem, therefore, the students will 
be explicitly given opportunities to strengthen this skill.  
C. Explain how you will reassess for mastery of the concept. Rodolfo has six pencils. He 
wants to give two pencils to each of his friends. How many friends will he be able to give 
a pencil to? 
Maliha eats 3 cookies everyday. How many cookies will she eat after seven days?  
Mackenzie has 64 playing cards. She gave 17 to her brother. How many playing cards 
does she have now? 
 
 
  
 
 
 
Scoring Rubric 
  Possible 
Points 
 Section A: Context for Learning    
A1  1 
A2  1 
A3  1 
A4  5 
A5  5 
A6  5 

Section B: Whole Class Lesson    

B1  1 
B2  1 
B3  10 
B4  8 
B5  10 

Section C: Results of whole class assessment    

C1  10 
C2  14 
C3  6 

Section D: Plan for re-engagement    

D1  2 
D2  10 
D3a or D3b  10 

Total of all scores:   100