Teacher Interview Date: 3/11/13 School: Nathaniel Alexander Elementary CMS Grade Level: 3rd

1. What types of instructional activities help children learn mathematics at this age? Anything with manipulatives, having them be able to see it not just listen to it or see it up on the screen but actually be able to move things around and manipulate how their solving the problem rather than just saying, This is how you do it. Videos and songs help with memorizing different facts and things like that. 2. What percent of your class time is devoted to conceptual development? Practice? Assessment? I would say I am assessing all the time, so 100% because even if it is not pen and paper assessment, Im always observing. I would say for conceptual development I spend maybe 20 minutes during a math lesson, and the rest of the time they practice, which would be 40-45 minutes of practicing what they learned that day. 3. What different types of assessment do you use in teaching mathematics? Observing is one. I have exit tickets which are not graded, but the students will complete an assignment on whatever skill I was teaching that day. I look at those to form different strategy groups, and if only a few that dont understand it then I will pull them. I do give pre-assessments and post-assessments, but Investigations lays it out, so you usually get one or two assessments within the unit. 4. What kind of information do you get from each different type? Observation I can look right then and there who is not understanding it, so if I need to repeat or go back over, and its quick and fast. Pretty much all of the assessments I can look to see who does not understand and where they went wrong. Observing I can see they arent understanding it. For the exit tickets I can look at their work and see if they understood how to set-up the problem and solve it. 5. How do you use this information? To form my strategy groups of who I am going to work with that day. 6. Describe any assessment procedures (other than the EOG) that are required by your school or school system. How is the information from those assessments used? We dont really have any procedures. Some schools give cumulative assessments, but we just do our own in our classroom. 7. How do you use information from the results of the NC end-of-grade test? Well this is my first year teaching 3rd grade. I was in 1st grade last year, so this is my first time doing the EOG. 8. How does your school or school system use the results of the EOG?

They use it to make their goals for the upcoming year. It is going to be a little different this year because we are taking a new EOG with the common core standards, so they wont actually get their scores back till October.

9. How does the EOG affect your teaching throughout the year? This year because we know that the test is common core weve had to change to the common core, so all of our standards have changed. We actually last night got practice test questions, so we can kind of see what the test questions are so that will kind of drive what we are working on with our test prep. 10. How do you help children prepare for the end-of-grade test? We have a whole unit of test prep and as far as reading using different strategies and test model as far as read this and answer these questions. As far as math, we dont have a unit for test prep we are just kind of going along with investigations, but we have actually set the bar higher because our tests are a lot of open ended questions rather than a lot of multiple choice. We are getting there. Reflection 1. What were your impressions about the teachers attitude towards teaching math? I felt that the teacher was very confident in her teaching and her students abilities. She has been working hard to teach the common core standards, and she feels pretty secure that they will have covered what is on the EOG. Since this is her first year teaching 3rd grade, I could tell she was nervous about preparing them for this big test, but from what I observed she is doing a great job at teaching them math. She really likes using manipulatives because it helps the students learn better. She likes making the math concrete and visual, so the students can grasp the concepts, rather than just memorize it. 2. What is your reaction to the teachers comments about assessment? I like the way the teacher assesses her class. I think observing is a great way to assess because in that moment the teacher can step in if the child is having difficulty. Exit tickets are also helpful when trying to determine if a child understands any, some or the entire concept. It must be very beneficial to have these exit tickets because she can make strategy groups out of them, so each child can get the extra help they need. I think it is good to have pre-assessments and post-assessments as well because this shows what the students learned over the unit.