Action Plan
I collected data in three ways. The first way was daily observations. My Algebra classes were at the end of the day, so I wrote down observation notes during class and journaled after classes were over. I documented the major instances of issues with operations with negative numbers. For example, I had a student who did not understand why it mattered what the sign was in the answer to a problem. This showed a major misunderstanding of negative numbers. This is something that I documented. I picked three students in each class to pay extra attention to in my observations. I picked a student who needed more support, a student on level, and a student who had a good understanding of the concept to observe. I wanted to do observations because I felt that I learned from my students by watching them do the work.
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I collected data through their in class assignments. These assignments had problems that just had students do calculations with negative numbers. I took note of how many mistakes students made, over the course of several in class assignments. This showed me how the students were doing with the operations without looking at it in a context of another problem.
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I also collected data through their post test. The unit we were working on was factoring. This unit is very important and can be very challenging if students don’t understand how to do operations with negative numbers. I noted how many mistakes students made due to negative numbers. This was comparable to the past tests I compared them to. In past tests, I noted how many mistakes they made in the context of solving problems in different topics. This showed how they handled operations with negative numbers when that is not the only focus of the problem.
I implemented teaching strategies, in my 8th and 9th hour Algebra classes, in the form of bell work that improved number sense, particularly when it comes to negative numbers. I did this by first going back and reteaching the concept of negative numbers and operations of negative numbers. I taught this by getting students to understand the minus and negative sign, how they are related, and what they stand for. I wanted students to be able to fluidly go between subtraction and adding a negative. I also wanted them to understand the negative sign as meaning the opposite of a number or variable.
I then utilized number lines, in particular kinesthetic number lines where the students moved on a number line, in order to show operations with negative numbers. I had them practice doing operations with negative numbers for a significant chunk of days.
Finally, I showed students the purpose of negative numbers throughout by utilizing real world examples. I started with money and temperature as these are topics I know my students are familiar with. I also looked for other real world examples by asking my students how they thought operations with negative numbers came up in the real world. One application they came up with was altitude.
Implementation
Data Collection
