NAEYC Elementary Mathematics Tutoring Project

Joseph O. Schuster

December 9, 2018
 Introduction

For this NAEYC elementary mathematics tutoring project, I worked with “David,” a

nine-year-old third grader from East Garfield Elementary school. East Garfield is a part of the

Steubenville City School System. Established in 1839, Steubenville City Schools (SCS) is a

long-standing school system with a focus on personal growth and social responsibility in

addition to academic achievement (CITATION). SCS relies on collaboration between the

faculty, families, and the community and offers opportunities for system-wide professional

development and parent conferences (CITATION).

During the semester, I met with David for nine total tutoring sessions, each one lasting

approximately 40 minutes and taking place in an empty classroom at the school. The first time I

met with David, I “interviewed” him in order to get to know him better and to understand his

personality and interests in a way that would inform my instruction during our future tutoring

sessions. I asked David questions about his family, current hobbies, and favorite things. For

example, I learned that David has one brother and two sisters, that he loves fried chicken,

football, wrestling, and Applebee’s and that if he could have any car he would drive a red

Porsha. I also talked to David about what he was currently learning in math class and discovered

that he and his classmates were introduced to the concept of multiplication very recently.

Diagnostic Screening Test Outcomes, Goals and Strategies

After “interviewing” David and making sure he felt comfortable with me, I administered

the Diagnostic Screening Test for Mathematics. I made sure to tell David that this was not a

graded test for his teacher, but rather a “check-up” for me to let me know what he has learned in

math so far. Overall, David seemed to have a very calm demeanor while taking the test,
especially when he looked at the first problem and saw that it was easy. However, as David

progressed through the test and came to more difficult problems with concepts that he was

unfamiliar with, I could tell that he became slightly anxious. When he told me he did not know

how to do one of the problems, I told him that was perfectly acceptable and asked him to guess

or try his best. Unfortunately, David preferred to not answer problems that he was unfamiliar

with. I tried to exhibit a constant sense of positivity and encouragement for David so that he

knew I was not at all upset for him if he did not know how to do a problem. At the end of the

test, I congratulated David and gave him a choice of candy for his effort.

David’s Total Basic score on the Diagnostic Screening Test was a 2.7. Between the nine

domain sections, David’s highest score was a 2.6 on the Complex section and his lowest score

was a 0 on the Manipulation, Zero, Decimals, Simple Fractions, and Manipulations of Fractions

sections. Within the Operations subsets, David scored the highest on Division (3.2) and the

lowest on Multiplication (0).

Based on these test results and my observations of David during the administration of the

test, I became aware of several areas of mathematics that I would consider his strengths. His

strengths include skills in single-digit and multiple-digit addition and subtraction without

carrying, as well as a proficient understanding of sequences and a strong ability to find the

patterns in sequences. I became aware of the latter strength when David answered correctly for

the sequence under the Division subset, even though he has not yet been introduced to the

concept of division in his math class.

I also became aware of several mathematical areas of weakness for David. His main

weaknesses stem from an unfamiliarity with the concept of multiplication and division, as well

as unfamiliarity with fractions and decimals. I determined these weaknesses not only from
David’s low scores on the fractions and decimals portion of the test, but also from his reaction to

these problems during test administration. David reacted very strongly when he was unfamiliar

with a problem, and it took prompting to try to encourage David to attempt these problems even

though he was unfamiliar. I also observed that one of David’s weaknesses was computational

fluency. Even for the addition and subtraction problems that he answered correctly on the test, I

observed that he used his fingers to count up or down for all of them.

With my newfound knowledge of David’s strengths and weaknesses in mathematics,

what was my game plan for our tutoring sessions together? To be completely honest, I was

overwhelmed with the amount of concepts that David was either unfamiliar with or not proficient

in. With only seven more 40 minute sessions with him, I knew that I needed to be specific in the

goals I chose to work towards. I also knew that I needed to start with areas of mathematics that

David was familiar with and proficient in, and build on that knowledge and scaffold to new

concepts. For example, I did not think it would be wise to start teaching David about fractions

when he did not have a basic understanding of multiplication. Therefore, I determined that one

of my main goals for our tutoring sessions would be that David gains an understanding of the

concepts of multiplication and division, as well as computational fluency in their operations. In

addition, I made the goal of teaching David how to add and subtract two or three-digit number

with carrying and borrowing and with decimals.

Now I had to ask myself: what instructional strategies will I employ to help David

accomplish these goals? I wanted to use a variety of strategies, but I decided that two particular

ones should be a part of every tutoring session. First, I wanted to use manipulatives, especially

during our practice with multiplication and division. The use of manipulatives was of very high

priority to me because of the research I have read that shows manipulatives to increase the
conceptual understanding of operations (“Research on”, n.d.). Manipulatives have also been

shown to help students relate real-world situations to mathematical symbolism—to actually see

how multiplication and division works in the real world instead of just memorizing an algorithm

(“Research on”, n.d.). Second, I wanted to involve the use of math games as a tool in my

instruction. This was important to me because I have learned that games benefit mathematics in

several important ways. Not only do games provide fun ways for students practice math skills,

but they have also been shown to support students’ development of computational fluency when

played repeatedly (Rutherford, 2015). After seeing how many times David used his fingers to

solve problems on the assessment, I wanted to improve his computational fluency so that every

math problem was not a chore and he could move toward problems of higher-order thinking.
 References

Rutherford, K. (2015). Why play math games? Teaching Children Mathematics. Retrieved from

https://www.nctm.org/publications/teaching-children-mathematics/blog/why-play-math-

games_/

https://www.hand2mind.com/pdf/learning_place/research_math_manips.pdf

http://www.rollred.org/District.aspx