Douglas Harrington

TE 804 Spring 2012

Unit Plan Reflection

The Art of Weaving: Teaching Mathematical Concepts Effectively

No marathon runner starts without the finish line firmly in his mind. Though the bodily

conditioning appears to be the most essential training, mental preparation ultimately proves

more valuable. Knowledge of his route affords the runner the ability to train more effectively

with the route as his minds only goal, he understands areas where his pace can be strained and

where extra care must be taken. Although the connection to teaching may not be immediately

clear, the teacher must go through similar preparation to effectively plan a unit. Taking time to

deeply analyze connections between mathematical ideas allows the teacher to weave a clear

storyline resulting in understanding and mastery. Like the knowledge of the marathons route,

an understanding of important connections between mathematical concepts provides the

teacher with the ability to identify problematic ideas and designate extra time to those areas.

By reflecting on planning practices across two units, I identified ways in which my planning has

evolved to more effectively meet the needs of students within my classroom: these three main

areas are the nature of the lessons, versatility with the storyline, and the assessment of student

understanding.

Some attention must be given to the process which I employed since planning both

units involved an identical procedure despite the varied results. First, I identified the broad

mathematical category to explore while identifying the necessary corresponding Common Core

State Standards; for example, the first unit focuses on polynomial functions while the second
attends to exponential functions. Before planning a single lesson, I designed a summative

assessment in line with the standards I hoped to address. Using the assessment as a guide along

with my mathematical content knowledge, I constructed conceptual bridges between the

concepts needed to successfully complete the assessment. Constructing the bridges revealed

the location of each concept within the unit facilitating the assembly of the mathematical

storyline and ultimately the lesson schedule.

The most significant evolution in my unit planning regards a fundamental shift in the

nature of individual lessons throughout the unit. The planning and implementation of the tasks

in my first unit plan did not result in low-cognitive demand activities; however, since the tasks

reinforced the importance of observations, the students passively engaged with the actual

mathematics. On the other hand, my final unit plan incorporated tasks in which the students

necessarily constructed their own structures to unpack the meaning of the mathematical

concepts. Although the difference between observation and inquiry may seem like an asinine

argument about semantics, the pedagogical ramifications are extremely significant.

My initial planning practices were characterized by a focus on observation. Building on

previously existing conceptual foundations, students furthered understanding by drawing

conclusions about new mathematical phenomena using mastered material. For example, both

the Angry Birds Task and One of Many Ways (see intern page for activities) required students to

graph functions using a calculator and use observations about those graphs to determine how

different values affect the function before arriving at generalized transformation equation.

Although deduction is an important mathematical skill consistent with abstract reasoning, the
students did not possess enough previous mathematical knowledge of the functions to reach

deeper conclusions. Ultimately, students failed to dig deeper into the functions and focused on

surface level characteristics of the graph. As described in my reflection on CS2, One of Many

Ways helped students generalize about the connection between the number of real zeros and

the degree of the polynomial, but I introduced the notion of complex zeros as pairs (see CS2

Video Clip 2). I understood where the observations fit with the mathematical storyline of the

unit; however, students struggled to see the significance of such observations. In turn, the

observations actually impaired the progress of the unit for a time as students needed to build a

larger working foundation.

The lessons present in the final unit plan reflect my new focus on inquiry-based lessons.

Students prior experiences with exponential functions had been minimal and did not focus on

the algebraic representation in-depth if at all. Therefore, lessons were designed for students to

employ previous mathematical content knowledge and skills to make sense of contextual

situations and arrive at solutions with new results. For example, The Disease Wont Stop

Growing! challenged students to use the described situation to create a function that could be

used to predict the growth of the disease. Unlike the first unit plan which featured students

generalizing functions without exploring their mathematical structure, this lesson required

students to use their knowledge of increase and exponents to reach a generalized form. The

final question on the activity was written to assess how effectively the nature of the task

facilitated the generalization. Analyzing student artifacts revealed students consistently used

the fact an infected person infected four new people to multiply the previous days case by four;

then breaking down the total number into its factors revealed the connection between the day
number and the number of times the factor appeared. After students completed this work, the

class progressed to generalizing exponential form by contextualizing three separate equations.

Instead of trying to retroactively generalize the form like my first units lessons, inquiry allowed

students to construct the transformation in the way I originally intended.

During the process of designing the first unit, I concentrated much of my energy on a

logical flow of mathematical ideas. Obviously building each idea of the successive idea remains

an integral part of the discipline of mathematics; however, such absorption into the linear flow

of the topics overshadowed the connections I drew between mathematical concepts. Since

Heibert & Carpenter (1992) argue that more connections between mathematical ideas

represents greater understanding, I must have demonstrated deep connections between major

concepts of polynomial functions according to my concept map (see UP Concept Map);

however, my strong conceptual understanding of the content did not transfer to a strong inter-

connected presentation of the content for the students (see UP Storyline). Instead, the

connections simply built a foundation facing one way the degree determines the number of

zeros and the signs determine which are real or imaginary rather than linking back to building

functions from the zeros as well. In the study on concept mapping, Williams (1998) observe that

the variance between the experts and students concept maps largely reflects the difference in

the depth of content knowledge. The linear design of the unit ensured the students

understanding did not map similarly to mine.

Although the procedure for designing both units remained identical, reflecting on the

first unit facilitated an evolution in the flexibility of the mathematical storyline for the second
unit. Even though the concept map did not feature the extensive connection of my first unit

plan, the map facilitated a valuable divergence in the storyline. Instead of using my own

concept knowledge to map desired connections among concepts, I used a student lens to

identify the kind of connections I wanted students to make among concepts throughout the

unit and ultimately on the assessment. Teachers commonly write lessons with conceptual

connections consistent with their own knowledge base; since students lack the same expertise,

the lesson fails to reach its end goal. Using the student lens avoided this pitfall, present in the

first unit plan, and provided multiple routes through which concepts could be bridged (see UPR

Storyline). In turn, I rearranged lessons as the unit progressed to tailor around the

understanding students were developing. For example, the notion of percent growth was

pushed back until the second day to insure students grasped the structure of exponential

growth. I also switched the order of same-base equations and compounded interest so

students could better grasp the notion of compounded-ness. Such versatility in the unit is only

possible when the teacher possesses expert knowledge, but approaches the math with student

thinking in mind.

Unsurprisingly, as the nature of the tasks and mathematical storyline evolved, my

typical assessments needed to be altered to reflect the pedagogical shift. Although I

implemented assessments with higher-order problems, the format consistently reflected a

typical short answer test: each problem assessed a single lesson objective. However,

assessments should emulate the type of work which occurred during the unit and so assessing a

single objective at a time did not suit my final unit plan. Instead, I constructed an assessment
which adhered to the mathematical flow of the unit. Matching the nature of the assessment

and tasks resulted in significant differences.

Uncertain as to how to effectively assess the students knowledge, students performed

a traditional short answer test (use UP Assessment as reference). Each question assessed the

students progression on a single lesson-level objective reflecting the linear mathematical

storyline. Although asking the students to choose the correct graph given a set of zeros and

explain why the certain set was chosen allowed students to work between concepts, the overall

whole did not represent the intricate connections established during the daily lessons.

Furthermore, students engaged in higher-order thinking about the connections between topics

on a daily basis; however, the assessment did not allow students to demonstrate the wealth of

understanding choosing instead to focus on skills. Without the type of student thinking as the

focal point, my assessment failed to allow students to express multiple connections between

the various ideas, facts, and procedures (Hiebert & Carpenter 1992, Sisofo 2010). As a result,

the average percentage on the assessment was 81 percent. The thinking generated by the daily

lessons must reside in the assessment or students do not have an adequate opportunity to

communicate their conceptual understanding.

During the planning of my final unit, I created each lesson as an extension of part of the

assessment. Even though the concept map seems sparser than in my first unit, the connections

are not only solid, but also within the students context. Using a conceptually deeper mapping,

the lessons were designed to reflect the context driven assessment. Since the lessons required

students to instill their own mathematical structures to problems in order to reach solutions,
daily lessons reinforced this principle. Clearly, traditional assessment formats do not provide

opportunities for students to demonstrate such understanding effectively. Therefore, the new

assessment was delivered as a project to be worked on in class with a single partner. Upon

completion, the pairs generated concept maps of their own explaining how each connection

helped solve the problems in the project. Although concept mapping cannot differentiate

between subtle levels of understanding, qualitative analysis of the concept map can provide

information about student understanding not necessarily possible with a traditional test

(Williams 1998). Using the mapping as framework, I effectively traced the lines of reasoning for

the majority of groups. Although some holes existed regarding concepts such as negative

exponential growth, the overall achievement ranked much higher than the first unit: 93 percent

classroom average (across four classrooms). Such achievement is only possible when the

assessment is written in such a way that students can readily express the conceptual knowledge

built during the progression of a unit.

Despite great strides in my pedagogical understanding of unit planning, clearly areas of

improvement still exist in regards to my own knowledge resources. Though I possess strong

mathematical content understanding, I am translating the knowledge to teachable content

knowledge. The mapping process provides visual depictions of my content understanding by

bridging one concept to another; these bridges then construct the foundation for ways in which

I can guide students through mathematical concepts over the course of a unit. Essentially the

content knowledge provides the airways for which the unit breathes while teachable content

knowledge is the oxygen giving life to the process. Creating an effective mathematical storyline

truly is an assessment of how much I understand about teaching the content I know so well. As
I improve in this area, the mathematical storylines will become more versatile and inter-

connected.

As a result, my ability to be flexible with the mathematical storyline is also a work in

progress. My initial tendency is always to build concept on concept, creating a tower of

conceptual knowledge; however, towers are often easily affected by the elements and I am

aiming for deep conceptual understanding for all students. As a result, I am learning a linear

storyline fails to capitalize on important opportunities to revisit concepts. Instead of completing

concepts one-at-a-time, students are constantly reforming and realigning beliefs about

mathematics and it is necessary to aid the process if understanding is the goal. As students

worked on same-base equations, I took deliberate opportunities to reinforce rules of exponents

and explain the importance of previous topics at this point. I already view mathematics as a

wonderfully intricate structure; however, students may not yet hold such a view do to gaps in

understanding. Instead of mapping the storyline to a linear function, the storyline is much more

effective as a piecewise whole allowing students to advance at different rates by building on

previous topics.

Thinking critically about the unit planning process has revealed my progress regarding

the nature of mathematical tasks, flexibility with the mathematical storyline, and my

understanding of assessment; however, grasping my accomplishments only serves to energize

my quest for further growth in areas where the progress has been limited. Planning a unit

requires significant understanding of how the concepts intersect with one another in order to

weave a clear and concise thread throughout the whole. This preparation affords opportunities
to think critically about the ways in which students may respond to different mathematical

ideas. Such as the ocean, my teaching practice is an ever-changing face with much more

concealed beneath its depths unit planning is only one of these facets, but it has proved

essential to my effective practice.

Works Cited

Hiebert, J.; Carpenter, T. P. (1992). Learning and teaching with understanding. Handbook of

research on mathematics teaching and research, (65-97).

Sisofo, E. J. (2010). Evaluating the effects of lesson study as a way to help student teachers

learn how to use student thinking when planning and revising mathematics

instruction. Dissertation: University of Delaware

Williams, C. G (1998). Using concept maps to assess conceptual knowledge of function.

Journal for research in mathematics education, 29(4) 414-421.