9

After One Number Is the Next!

Assessing a Student’s Knowledge of Counting

Maureen McCarty

As a first-year teacher, I often felt overwhelmed by all of the decisions I had to make
daily. Teaching an inclusive class of first graders, I struggled to determine just what
a child needs and then, of course, how to best meet those needs within the given
curriculum. How do you support a child with significant needs in a way that ad-
dresses a lesson’s objective, on a level appropriate for that child? As simple as it
might sound, I am learning that to target needs, I must first identify them.
Therefore, it is assessment that has supported me in making some of these difficult
teaching decisions. Through close work with one particular child, I learned both
how to gather useful assessment data and also how this data can guide my teaching.
Assessment has helped me target support and provide access for a student struggling
with a mathematics curriculum that seems to march unforgivingly forward.
Early in the year, I worked with a small group of students who were all strug-
gling with a majority of the mathematical tasks they encountered. I pulled the
five students together during the independent practice part of our math block,
which was structured as a workshop format. In the beginning, I presented some of
the curriculum’s kindergarten-level versions of games and activities that rein-
forced the goals of that day’s lesson. However, I quickly realized that the needs of
each of these children were actually quite different depending on the task. I be-
came frustrated. What did they each need? How could I meet all the needs at
once? I accepted that I couldn’t target their needs until I knew what to target. I
decided that focusing more intensely on one child at a time was a more manage-
able assessment task for me. Perhaps I would form small groups later, but not with-
out identifying a more specific reason for bringing the students together. It was
also at this time that I became especially concerned and curious about one par-
ticular child in the group—Tamara.
Tamara is an active little girl. She is by far the most kinesthetic individual I have
ever met—she devises ways to make almost any task include a physical component.