Kaitlin Jenkins Cooperating Teacher: Mrs.

Bostwick
March 6, 2014 Field Report 2
Before the students arrived at school on March 6, 2014, I sat down with Mrs. Bostwick to
discuss the math lesson she had planned for the day. She will give the students a word problem
that involves addition and counting by tens. Mrs. Bostwick hopes the students will be able to add
by counting by tens and use the information that is provided in the problem to find the answer.
Since Mrs. Bostwick has been teaching for twenty-five years, she has used this lesson
many times. Mrs. Bostwick and the two other Kindergarten teachers, Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Moss,
share their lessons. Each teacher alters the lessons to fit her class, but overall the lessons remain
very similar. Mrs. Bostwick created the lesson in the beginning of her teaching career, with the
idea of incorporating math and reading. She continues to use this lesson year after year because
she says, When students are able to make connections between math and reading, they begin to
understand language and numbers as related ideas.
In order to incorporate math and reading into her lesson, Mrs. Bostwick will read
Goldilocks and the Three Bears and then tell the students she received a letter from a character in
Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Baby Bear. Mrs. Bostwick will read the letter and tell the
students Baby Bear needs their help to solve a problem. In the letter, Baby Bear mentions how he
is baking cookies and needs help figuring out how many trays he needs to bake 40 cookies, with
10 cookies on each tray. After reading the problem, Mrs. Bostwick plans to pair a higher-level
student with a lower-level student and have the students work through the problem. The students
will discuss how they think they can solve the problem and show their understanding either
through a visual or numerical representation. Then, Mrs. Bostwick will have the students come
to the front rug and share their ideas with the class. Each pair will discuss how they solved the
problem and provide the answer. After each pair has shared their ideas, Mrs. Bostwick will go
over the correct answer with the whole class.
During the lesson, I observed two pairs of students who were sitting at the same table. As
I observed the first pair, I noticed the higher-level student was dominating the conversation and
would not allow the lower-level student to contribute his ideas. The higher-level student
immediately said, This problem is so easy, all you have to do is add 10+10+10+10 to get 40 and
then you know there are 4 jars. Since the student gave the answer right away, his partner did
not have a chance to think about the problem. Interestingly, although 4 is the correct number, the
question was asking for how many trays. However, the second pair I was observing heard the
first pair say 4 jars and changed their original answer of 4 trays to 4 jars. The students were
very aware of the discussions happening around them and as a result they changed their answer.
Unlike the first pair of students, the second pair of students at the table worked through
the problem and I was able to see their thought process. After reading the problem, one student
said, The problem says there are 40 cookies, so we should draw 40 cookies. This student was
using the knowledge she already had about using the information given in the problem. After
drawing out 40 cookies, her partner suggested counting 10 cookies at a time and drawing a
picture of the cookies on the trays. This student was demonstrating her understanding of using
the information in the problem, addition, and creating a visual representation to communicate her
ideas. Even though Mrs. Bostwick wanted the students to count by tens, the student still arrived
at the same answer by counting by ones. The students wrote down the answer as 4 trays, but
upon hearing the other pair say 4 jars, the second pair changed their answer. Overall, the
lesson followed Mrs. Bostwicks plan, however based on my observations of the two pairs, the
first pair had difficulty working as a mixed- ability team and the second pair was easily swayed
by hearing their classmates answer.
After the lesson, I sat down again with Mrs. Bostwick to discuss her thoughts about the
lesson. Although I did not observe this student, Mrs. Bostwick was pleased to see one student
came up with another way to make 40 cookies, besides having 10 cookies on 4 trays. He said,
You can have 10 trays with 4 cookies on each tray. For this individual, Mrs. Bostwick felt the
lesson was a success because he took the information given in the problem and thought of
another way to manipulate the numbers. Similar to my observations, she saw other pairs
struggling to work with different ability levels. The next time she does this lesson, she would like
to pair the students according to whom they work well with, as opposed to pairing the students
by mixed- abilities.
From her perspective of the whole class, Mrs. Bostwick felt a majority of the students
met her objective and expectations. She knew that some students would struggle with the
problem, so she placed the lower-level students with the higher-level students. When the students
shared their answers as a class, she was glad to see many students found the correct answer and
could take the information in the word problem and count by tens.
Since most students feel comfortable counting by tens and using addition, Mrs. Bostwick
plans to continue the lesson by teaching the students how to count by threes and fours. The
students already know how to count by ones, twos, fives, and tens, but she wants to give them a
more challenging problem.
After having a pre-interview, observing a small group of students during the lesson, and
having a post-interview with Mrs. Bostwick, I was able to see the different parts that go into a
math lesson. Even though Mrs. Bostwick and I were in the same classroom, our observations
were different because of the students we were focusing on. When designing, implementing, and
reflecting on math lessons, it is essential to consider the whole class as well as small groups and
individual students.