Teacher Work Sample

For my teacher work sample I choose to follow the steps my students and I did during the
word problems math unit. I started out by giving the students a pre-test to test their knowledge
and get a feel for what they already know. I then proceeded in using formative assessments daily
to assess what students needed what.
For the first two days of the unit we were working on strategies for helping solve word
problems so it was whole group instruction because I felt all students needed to learn these new
strategies. Next I used the students answers from a missing addend question on their pre-test to
find out who was going to be working on extension activities. I had eight students working on a
missing addend game. The rest of the group was in a whole class more specific instruction on
how to find the missing addends.
For the second intervention I did I asked the students to solve two problems and used this
as a formative assessment. One problem was focused on too much information and the other was
telling what else was needed to be able to solve. The students who answered both correctly were
working on the extension. The extension for this activity was to write your own problems with
too much and not enough information and then solve another students problems. I kept the rest
of the group for some instruction on strategies on how to look for too much information and not
enough information. The students who had gotten at least one of the questions right from the
beginning assessment, after having some more instruction, were asked to write their own word
problems with too much information in them. The other students in the remedial group were then
given even more instruction and practice on solving these types of problems.
For my last intervention, I used a two-step word problem as a formative assessment. The
students were asked to solve the problem using any method they knew. The next day I did whole
class instruction on working on the steps in order of two step word problems. The following day
I broke the class up into sections for interventions. The students who had gotten the two step
problem the first time were doing an activity of writing and solving two step word problems, and
using equations to write problems. The students who understood the first step were working in
groups to write and solve other groups word problems. The remedial group was given direct
small group instruction. While formatively assessing students during this small group I was able
to dismiss two students who understood to go work on other problems.
The whole class was split into five equal groups for a review on the day before the test. I
created a game called MathLand. It was a life size board game, and each group was given a game
piece. I would put up a question on the smart board; everyone was then given one to two minutes
to solve the problem. Then they would get thirty seconds to come up with their final answer.
Whichever table groups turn it was would then come up to the smart board and explain their
answer to the class, roll the dice and move up on the board.
The following day they were given their final assessment for the unit. There were two
forms of the test, short answer and multiple choice. The students who had continually been in the
remedial group were given the multiple choice test and the others were given the short answer.
The students took the test the first time and then were given the option to make corrections
without any instruction. After they made corrections the first time I recorded their score for their
final assessment. After recording this score I gave the students who still needed some instruction
that small group time and worked with them on those problems.