DESIGNING A DIFFERENTIATED LESSON PLAN

    My field experience takes place in a classroom with twenty-six sixth graders. These students are now learning about ordering rational numbers in order from least to greatest with and without a number line. During an observation, I noticed that students displayed difficulty with ordering decimals and were not proficient with writing decimals as fractions; a strategy that students can use to compare decimals. I expressed my concerns with my mentor teacher, and she shared with me that students are not proficient in writing decimals as fractions and based on the results from an assessment students took earlier this school year, they need remediation. “Making connections between fractions and decimals could enable learner to achieve a better understanding of rational numbers” (Braithwaite et al., 2022). To address the need of remediation of skills, I created a differentiated lesson plan that will help students convert percents to decimals and fractions using the hundreds’ grid chart.

    When planning this lesson, I wanted students to experience the conversion of decimals to fractions in a way that would address their visual, kinesthetic, and auditory needs. That said, the instructional strategies that I chose for this lesson will reinforce students’ understanding of writing decimals as fractions and transfer learning from “short term memory to long term memory” (McCarthy, 2013). Percents are parts of a whole expressed in hundredths (Merriam-Webster.com, 2023); therefore, using a hundred grid is an appropriate modeling tool for students to manipulate when learning how to write percents as decimals and fractions. As students color each hundredth (0.01) unit on the grid, they will be counting by hundredths at the same time; thus, students should be able to write a decimal after totaling all hundredths. In addition to the hundreds’ grid, students also have access to a class model of the place value chart that can be used when reading and writing decimals and fractions precisely. After students have totaled their hundredth units, they can use the place value chart to write a decimal; making sure the decimal point is in the correct place with two digits written behind. From here, students can use the headings in the place value chart (ones, tenths, and hundredths) to practice reading the decimal and write the corresponding fraction. For example, “0.35” is read as, “zero and thirty-five hundredths”, so when writing the fraction, students will write “35” as the numerator over the denominator “100”.

    The assessment I created for this lesson requires students to demonstrate their understanding of writing percents as fractions and decimals by solving a real-world problem and using a hundred grid to model. Using the information given, students would have to calculate the percentage of sixth graders who attended a school field trip, express the percents of all middle school students on the field trip as a decimal and fraction, and color code the hundreds’ grid to model the percents of all students who are on the trip. Sometimes, the thought of assessments can create anxiety in students. According to Sorvo et al., (2017), anxiety can affect math performance by straining working memory, which can result in lower performance in mathematics. Having the hundreds’ grid on the assessment can support students when they are writing percents and decimals and should hopefully eliminate feelings of anxiety because students would have already experienced working with them during instruction. For students who are gifted and finish the assessment early, they can access the website for the virtual hundreds’ grid, https://www.visnos.com/demos/percentage-fraction-decimals-grid, and practice creating more percents and expressing them as decimals and fractions. Students can also use the virtual hundreds’ grid to compare percents, decimals, fractions, and express fractions in the simplest form.

 References

Braithwaite, D. W., McMullen, J., & Hurst, M. A. (2022). Cross-notation knowledge of fractions  

      and decimals. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 213.

      https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105210

McCarthy, J. (2013, April 9). Math teacher shows students the art of numbers // Video //   

      Slideshow. News Herald, The (Panama City, FL).

“Percentage.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-

      webster.com/dictionary/percentage. Accessed 28 Jan. 2023.

Sorvo, R., Koponen, T., Viholainen, H., Aro, T., Räikkönen, E., Peura, P., Dowker, A., & Aro,

      M. (2017). Math anxiety and its relationship with basic arithmetic skills among primary

      school children. The British Journal of Educational Psychology, 87(3), 309–327.

      https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/bjep.12151

Virtual Manipulative for Modeling Percents and Converting Percents to Fractions and Decimals

      https://www.visnos.com/demos/percentage-fraction-decimals-grid