School Demographic
I teach at Anna R. Langford Community Academy. It is a Chicago Public Elementary school located on the south side of Chicago in the Englewood neighborhood. This area is considered one of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago and violence is the norm there. Students are already at a disadvantage when they enter my classroom. The data from my school shows that students are one to two grade levels behind based on the school-wide assessment. The pandemic did play a role in this data; however, before the pandemic students were still struggling with math. Not quite 200 students attend the school. Over half of the teachers have a master’s degree or higher. The student population is predominantly African American and there is a small percentage of Hispanic students. Langford Community Academy is a Title 1 school and qualifies for federally funded educational programs. Ninety-nine percent (99) of our students live below the poverty level.
About 1 student in every eight receives special education service. We have had several students transfer into the school who do not speak English. The English Language Learner population is increasing at a rapid rate. We currently only have one English Learner Program Teacher. Students in the lower grades are exposed to basic mathematic skills such as adding and subtracting using many different strategies and multiplication using arrays. However, when we move on to geometry, specifically, dealing with partitioning shapes, we start to see a decrease in excitement and engagement. This is when fractions are introduced. Fractions can be hard because there are so many components to fractions. So, what do our students need? They need to be taught basic mathematical skills through conceptual teaching. This method emphasizes teaching concepts. According to research from the National Center for Education Statistics, students are entering algebra courses struggling with precursor mathematics skills such as fractions. Students cannot be successful in algebra without understanding fractions. Fractions are also important because we use them in everyday activities such as measurement during cooking, counting money, and solving equations, just to list a few things. This unit will start with teaching fractions using fraction strips.
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