So what is my role as a teacher? I need to go beyond just knowing the lessons
well. I need to have clear goals for my students and to anticipate difficulties they
might experience as they explore mathematical ideas. I also need to listen carefully
to what children say and watch what they do to determine what they understand
and where they are confused. This ongoing assessment informs the type of questions
I need to ask and allows me to plan or adapt the activities in the curriculum.
The Context
In September, I met with the second-grade teachers at my school to identify stu-
dents who struggled in math. The list of students was primarily based on the
teachers’ observations. I administered the Early Numeracy Interview to assess the
children’s knowledge of counting, place value, strategies for addition and sub-
traction, and multiplication and division (Clarke 2001). Once I gathered this in-
formation, I shared it with the teachers and together we picked six students who
we felt were at greatest risk of falling further behind grade level in math. These
students had a variety of needs: some were English language learners, others had
Individualized Education Programs, and some had already repeated a grade. The
plan was that I would support them in the classroom daily during the math period.
My role was to observe the students closely and provide the necessary accommoda-
tions to the activities so that they could participate in the regular curriculum.
After a couple of months, it became evident that they needed additional help out-
side of the classroom. They had a slower learning pace, were not fluent in count-
ing by 1s, and struggled with the meaning of counting by a number other than 1.
We began the second-grade math support group in November. Children met with
me three additional times a week for forty-five minutes.
Counting by Tens
One big idea I wanted to work on with the students during the support group ses-
sions was that of unitizing: understanding that one group of objects stands both
for the group and the objects in it, and that the group constitutes a unit. For ex-
ample, when students say 2, 4, 6, they should understand that they are counting
3 groups of 2. I often asked the children to count collections of objects in more
than one way (i.e., by 2s, 5s, and 10s) and to think about whether they would get
the same answer each time. Although the answer may seem obvious, it was not
for these students. The activity exposed their confusions about counting by a
number other than 1.
One of my students, Michele, preferred to always count the collections by 1s.
When her partner suggested counting by 10s or 2s, Michele said that it was too
LINKINGASSESSMENT ANDTEACHING