As a West Virginia State University student, I have learned the purpose of understanding meaningful, coherent, sequential instruction and various ways to differentiate instruction for student learning. In one of my field studies, one moment stuck out that made sequential instruction stick to my mind more than any; today, I have walked away with the knowledge of understanding how vital it is to plan and structure my lesson so that there is a sequence to learning. "Verbal counting has at least two separate skills. First, a child must be able to produce the standard string of counting words in order: 'One, Two, Three, Four, ...'. Second, a child must be able to connect this sequence by using a one-to-one correspondence with the objects being counted" (Bay-Williams, 2023, p. 137). I found it fascinating in person to see students able to count freely from memorization and song and rhyme the numbers to sometimes up to mid-twenties. However, it was tough for a five or six-year-old to think about what they were grabbing, moving, counting, and doing all at once. We were working on their cardinality, which became a struggle for them. After seeing all this, my lesson objective was clear: "By the end of this lesson, students will be able to use addition and subtraction with small numbers in an unorganized pile grouping to obtain 75% progress toward the target goal of the cardinality set of twenty." In addition to this distinct objective, I did have one IEP, which requires "additional support and reduces his work from counting to 20 to (10)."

 

All my students in this placement were in kindergarten, and they were in Erikson's Developmental Stage Four, the stage of Industry vs. Inferiority, "through social interactions, children begin to develop a sense of pride in their accomplishments and abilities. Children need to cope with new social and academic demands. Success leads to a sense of competence, while failure results in feelings of inferiority" (Cherry, 2023). I had a wide range of students with different backgrounds. I worked with one E.S.L. student and various cultures as well. Our most significant connection was that we were all here to learn and work together cooperatively; this was a small group. I used this knowledge to my advantage and to the fact that the students were getting ready for the Halloween season. They loved Disney, so using student interest, my lesson was about "Oogie Boogie" from The Nightmare Before Christmas. I used my technology skills with Canva to create graphics and the manipulatives I would use.

 

From my observations, students struggled with cardinality sets of (20). With limited time and the pace of the Title I Interventions, my goal was to work in a sequence that models the learning objectives and scaffolds the lesson to the student's levels as I differentiate the spoken word problems. This is kindergarten math, an early introduction to word problems that are verbally assessed. Before beginning, I needed to evaluate if the students could count.

Assessing Skills by Sequencing:

• We are assessing the student's ability to count to twenty verbally.

• Pre-Assessment: evaluate the student's ability to correspond and count unorganized objects.

• Assess the student's abilities to manipulate the unorganized group (addition and subtraction to the group).

• Assess the student's ability to create an organized group and count from an unorganized group to solve the total sum.

The students and I started my group by practicing counting to as high as we could go, chorally as a group (stopped at 30). Then, we all practiced counting the spiders in front of us; there were twenty-five for each student. My cooperating teacher and I taught them (previously) to use their finger, touch slides and count. I formally assessed this as they gathered their spiders. Then they would add the spiders in addition to however many in the story I would say Oogie Boogie had eaten. For example, "Oogie Boogie ate five spiders!" Students then would count five spiders and slide them into his body. "One crawled out!" Take one out! Count the total spiders that are inside Oogie Boogie right now?" It should be four. Finally, once we got to the assessment, I did not tell the students the total; they had to figure that out. I filled up his belly and allowed students to use the strategy of "equal groups" we demonstrated through modeling and scaffolding.

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Learning one skill before the other was essential; counting to the twenty-first in the sequence is a prerequisite. I differentiated this lesson as I taught it to students who could only count to ten by counting one-to-one correspondence with the objects, as required by an IEP. Also, I created a differentiation for this lesson for a student who had difficulty writing his numbers. I made a device to help him practice writing numbers. It shows instructions on how to write a number correctly. Other students liked to use it, too, because we offered everyone this option!

• They were touching and thinking about their actions rather than just using memory alone.

 

Using the data collected to analyze the student outcomes was the final step in my placement. The student outcomes provide information that the students three of four students met their projected goals for this lesson and are expected to move further; as one did not meet 75%, it is likely that this one student will return to receive additional RTI Tier II instruction and continued Student Progress Monitoring as we watch the progression. My cooperating teacher requested my lesson and the manipulatives I created, saying she would teach it again. Mrs. Arnold says in my Evaluation, "Mr. Goodwin was always prepared and active with the students when observing. I feel he will be an asset to any elementary school."