Sarah Hirsch

TLS 316 Fall 16

Modified Lesson Analysis and Reflection
Summary of Lesson and Lesson Effectiveness
This lesson took place on November 16, 2016 during the morning hours. I taught this
lesson as part of a center rotation for that week. The class of 26 was divided between 6 centers.
I had 5 students at my center, three 1st graders and two 2nd graders. I started the lesson by telling
the students that we were going to be exploring number bonds and then asked if any of them
remembered what a number bond was from when it was discussed in a whole group setting
earlier in the week. Two of the students raised their hands and the first one I called on said, Its
kind of like a fact family. When I asked what the other student was thinking, they said that they
were going to say the same thing. After this short discussion, I used a small white board to show
what the number bond set up will look like on their worksheet. I explained to them that the
circle represented the whole number and that the two semi circles represented the two numbers
that made the whole number when added together. We then did a couple of problems together to
warm them up. I started them off with a whole unknown problem with the parts being 3 and 6. I
asked them to write their answers on their own white boards and then to hold them up when they
were done. All of the students were able to get the answer of 9. I then did a part unknown
equation with them with the whole number being 14 and one of the parts being 8. This one took
the students longer to figure out. Two of them reached for the unifix cubes that were in the
middle of the table, while the other three resorted to counting on their fingers. All but two of the
students were able to come up with the correct answer for this problem. I asked one of the
students who used unifix cubes to show how they solved the problem. The student said, Well I
used the cubes and I counted 14 of them first. I counted 8 from the 14 and took those out of the
pile. Then I counted the rest of the cubes to get the answer 6. I asked if all the students
understood how this student solved the problem. They all said they did so then I asked one of

Sarah Hirsch
TLS 316 Fall 16
Modified Lesson Analysis and Reflection
the students who used their fingers to tell how they solved the problem. The student said, I
started to count from 8 and counted to 14. Then I counted how many fingers I lifted to get to 14
and I counted 6. So I wrote the answer 6. I asked again if the students understood this childs
method and they all said they did. I asked if any of the students had any other questions about
the worksheet or what they were going to be doing with it. They all said that they knew what to
do so I passed out the worksheets to each of them.
All of the students independently worked on the worksheet rather well. I noticed that one
student was looking confused so I pulled up a chair next to them and I asked them which one
they were working on. The student pointed to the part unknown number bond with the whole
number being 15 and the part being 7. I asked the student how they thought they could solve it.
The student said that they liked how the other student solved it with the cubes. I prompted the
student to count out 15 of the cubes from the whole pile. We then decided together that we
should take 7 of them away and then count the remaining. With the support provided with this
problem, the student was able to solve the rest of the problems using the same method
independently. Besides this one occurrence, the children all seemed comfortable with this
activity and were able to work with the other students at the center to see other strategies for
solving the problems. As I observed the center I noticed that one student used a 100s chart to
solve one of the problems so I wrote that in my notes to remember to come back to them to show
the strategy at the closing of the lesson. I also noticed that one student created a math sentence
for one of the whole unknown problems and also made a note to have that student share their
strategy.
Once all of the students had finished their worksheet, I had them all come back together
as a whole group. I asked the student to share how she solved that one problem with the 100s

Sarah Hirsch
TLS 316 Fall 16
Modified Lesson Analysis and Reflection
chart. The other students all expressed that they had forgotten that they could have used that
strategy to solve that problem as well. I then asked the student who made a math sentence to
explain why he chose to do it that way. He said that that is how his head figured out the answer
so he wrote it down so he could see it. We did a quick debriefing about how they feel they
understand the concept of the number bond. All of the students said they understood and one
even said that they were easy for him. Once the debriefing was finished, I had the students clean
up the center and dismissed them to put their worksheets in their math folders.
I feel that this lesson inspired the students to participate through the numerous
discussions. The children in this classroom are comfortable with discussions since they are held
throughout our class days. The children were comfortable sharing the strategies from above and
were not shy when they had to demonstrate their strategies for the other children at the center. I
was surprised that all the children participated as thoroughly as they did, but that might also be
because they got to use a variety of manipulatives at once which isnt always how our classroom
operates. This lesson made students think about what makes up a number more in depth than
they have had to before. I feel that the different ways that were available to the students helped
with their learning of what a fact family was and how to solve for the missing values. Having a
problem that was missing a part instead of the whole was a new concept for the students but they
were able to understand this concept through the whole group warm ups and by keeping an
atmosphere where they could work together to solve problems. I feel that for the most part, this
lesson went pretty well. The only thing that I think did not go so well is that because all of the
students were working at different paces, I couldnt effectively pair them up midway through the
lesson, which was my original intention. I wanted to do this to expose the students to other
methods that their partners may be familiar with that they hadnt thought of before.

Sarah Hirsch
TLS 316 Fall 16
Modified Lesson Analysis and Reflection
Childrens Mathematics Understanding
The students understood a lot throughout this lesson. They understood what a number
bond was and were able to relate it to a familiar concept in their minds of a fact family or a
simple addition math sentence. This was shown in our discussion of what a number bond was
and how two of the students said that it was like a fact family. Some of the children understood
the concept of part unknown through the concept of viewing the problem as the opposite of a
subtraction situation and solve it by adding on or counting up (Van de Walle, 2014, p. 127).
The use of the unifix cubes that the children were demonstrating in the section above what a way
that helped them understand the concept of part unknown. All of the five children at my center
demonstrated the concept of direct modeling through the use of unifix cubes, fingers, and 100s
charts. The children that used this concept used these manipulatives to help them better
understand what the question was asking. One of the children also modeled the concept of
counting on strategies. This child showed that they knew their numbers, but still needed to
see how the two given numbers related.
Throughout teaching this lesson, I asked the students questions while they worked. I
asked them what manipulatives they used, if they could show me how they solved it, and if there
was another way that they could have solved the problem. I received varying answers to these
questions. For the first question, the students told me that they used the cubes, their fingers, the
100s chart, and that they just knew it. For the second question, they were all able to demonstrate
how they did each problem and could explain their thinking process. For the last question, some
of them were able to think of another strategies, but a couple of the students were only able to
execute the problem in the once method. For these children, we would talk through another
method that they had seen used before. I also had some of the students watch another students

Sarah Hirsch
TLS 316 Fall 16
Modified Lesson Analysis and Reflection
methods to help extend their thinking of problem solving around a question. I had to rephrase
some of the students thinking into my words so I could better understand what they were
thinking and so other students could better relate to their methods. When I did rephrase, I made
sure to stay true to their original ideas and to not present any new ideas that they had not voiced
themselves.
Two of the students had some difficulty with the part unknown equations on the
worksheet. They were unsure of how to begin to solve the problems because they were more
used to whole unknown equations. They are more familiar with this concept because in most
curricula, the overwhelming emphasis is on the easier join and separate problems with the result
unknown (Van de Walle, 2014, p. 129).
Through this lesson, the students learned what a number bond is. They learned this
concept through the group interactions during the introduction of the lesson, through the hands
on experiences they had during the independent work during the main task, and through the
discussions of various methods to solve and understand the problems. The children also learned
various methods of solving a number bond problem through the active participation with their
peers teaching the methods. They also learned how to better explain their processes through the
extending questions that I would ask if I felt that there was more information needed to fully
understand their thinking process. The students showed their learning the most through their use
of the different manipulatives and their responses that were given in the section above to how
they solved their problems.
Teaching Lens
I chose the teaching lens because I felt that it would be the lens that I would learn the
most from. Using a teaching lens when reviewing a lesson can help a teacher self-reflect on their

Sarah Hirsch
TLS 316 Fall 16
Modified Lesson Analysis and Reflection
methods of teaching. Also when a lesson is viewed through the teaching lens, holes in the lesson
may reveal themselves or solutions to problems with the lesson may show themselves. During
this particular lesson, the teacher elicited responses from students through open discussions and
through extending questions. The teacher was open to the responses that the students gave and
made sure that the center was a safe space for the students to express their ideas. The teacher
made sure to value the process instead of the product in the students thinking because when
teachers routinely respond with Yes, thats correct, or No, thats wrong, children will stop
trying to make sense of ideas in the classroom and discussion and learning will be curtailed
((Van de Walle, 2014, p. 11). The teacher elicited responses through asking the questions, How
did you figure out that bond?, What manipulatives did you use?, Can you show me how you
solved this bond?, and Is there another way that you could have solved this problem?. When
students explained their reasoning, the teacher made sure to show their understanding of their
process through rephrasing how they did it and even just simply saying, I completely
understand how you solved that.
The teacher was open to a number of types of explanations. Some of the students had
problems using their words to communicate their reasoning and when asked to explain would say
I dont know how I did it. When this was the response the teacher received, she would look to
see what materials were near the student to work out an extending question of, Did you use the
unifix cubes to get your answer?. This was all that was really needed to get the ball rolling on
the explanation that the child was capable of giving, but just too unsure of the words to do it.
When the child was asked this question, they responded with, Yeah. I got 15 of the cubes. The
teacher then asked, And then what did you do with the 15 cubes?. The student responded with,
I counted 8 of them and put them in this pile. Then I had 7 left in this pile so I put 7 as the

Sarah Hirsch
TLS 316 Fall 16
Modified Lesson Analysis and Reflection
answer. The teacher then responded with, I understand exactly how you solved that. You
counted out 15 cubes and put them in one pile. Then you counted out 8 of the cubes from the 15
and put them in another pile. You then saw that there were 7 cubes left of the original 15 and
you figured out that that was your answer. The student nodded and said, Yep, thats what I
did. This example shows how the teacher didnt just assume that the student didnt understand
or maybe just guessed, but instead looked at the materials around the student and helped them
find a starting point for describing their process.
The teacher implemented the task in a way that maintained the cognitive demand of the
task through the different types of number bond problems given to be solved. She did this by
making the problems with more challenging numbers for the students, having a mixture of part
unknown and whole unknown problems, and by not having a set way of how the students must
solve the problems. By leaving the problem open to many solutions, the students must
recognize that there is often a variety of methods that will lead to a solution (Van de Walle,
2014, p. 11). Another key piece to a childs cognitive development is being able to explain their
reasoning. Since this activity required the students to explain their thinking, the teacher
encouraged them to use whatever strategy they were most comfortable with. The teacher did this
because when children are encouraged to solve a problem in their own waythey are able to
make sense of their solution strategies and explain their reasoning (Van de Walle, 2014, p. 7).
The teacher also extended the childrens thinking through presenting them with whole unknown
problems, which they had never been exposed to before. This pushed them just past their
comfortable level to challenge their thinking about number bonds and how to solve them.
The teacher drew upon multiple resources to support student learning such as, the
students prior knowledge, using familiar manipulatives, and smaller group size. The teacher

Sarah Hirsch
TLS 316 Fall 16
Modified Lesson Analysis and Reflection
drew upon the knowledge that the students had about number bonds from a previous lesson
taught earlier in the week. She did this by saying, What did you guys learn about during math
on Monday? and, Do you remember how you guys used the number bonds to solve the
problem?. These questions helped get the students prepared for what the topic that we were
learning about might be. This also helped the students feel more prepared to tackle the new
problems since they were already familiar with the general topic of number bonds. By the
teacher picking manipulatives that the students are familiar with, this lets the students feel
comfortable with using all the tools around them to solve the number bond problems. The
familiar manipulatives supported the students learning because they were able to focus on
solving the problems instead of trying to figure out how to use the tools in front of them. The
smaller group sizes also promoted student learning because the teacher was able to support the
children on a more one on one basis. This helped the students because they could get the support
that they may need when solving the more difficult number bond problems. Having the smaller
group sizes also allowed for the teacher to more thoroughly check for understanding from the
students whether it be there answers, their explanations, or their use of the different
manipulatives.
The teacher moves related to student learning through the support that the moves
provided. The teacher made sure that all the students received the supports they needed in order
to learn effectively. The way the teacher set up the group and the materials that she chose to
provide, all related to the student learning happening throughout this lesson. The questions the
teacher asked were used to extend the student thinking and the student learning. The way the
teacher walked some of the children through their thinking also relates to the learning that
happened with the students.

Sarah Hirsch
TLS 316 Fall 16
Modified Lesson Analysis and Reflection
Extending Your Thinking
A mathematically appropriate follow-up lesson for this activity would be to translate the
number bonds into actual math sentences. These math sentences would consist of a variety of
problems with part unknown and whole unknown. The math sentence set up would look like
this: 4 + = 7 and like this 4 + 3 = . This lesson would build upon the same strategies that
the children learned through the number bond lesson. The teacher would introduce this lesson by
first warming up by doing some number bond problems together as a whole group. The teacher
would then show the students one of the math sentences and discuss similarities between this
equation and the number bond set up. The group would then try a few of the math sentences out
together as a group. The teacher would do one as an example with input from the students and
then the teacher will write two new problems on the board, one part unknown and one whole
unknown. The teacher will then call two students up to the board to solve the problems. After
the students solve the equations, the teacher will ask them to explain how they came to their
answer. Once both students have explained their reasoning, the teacher will ask the other
students if there are other ways the equations could have been solved. Once all the students have
said what they wanted to express, the teacher will give the students a worksheet and dismiss
them to the tables to independently work on the problems. At each table, there will be a variety
of manipulatives for the students to work with. While the students are working, the teacher will
be circulating throughout the room to provide support and extending questions where needed.
Once all of the students have finished the worksheet, the group will come back together and
discuss methods that were used to solve certain problems. Once all the methods have been
discussed, the teacher will have the students place the worksheets in their math folders and
dismiss them to the next activity on their schedule.

Sarah Hirsch
TLS 316 Fall 16
Modified Lesson Analysis and Reflection
Works Cited
Van de Walle, J. A., Lovin, L. H., Karp, K. S., Bay-Williams, J. M. (2014). Teaching StudentCentered Mathematics. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.