Day 23 Adding Decimals

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.NS.3 Fluently add, subtract, multiply, and divide multi-digit decimals using the standard algorithm for each operation.

The Learning Objective: Add and subtract decimal numbers.

Quote of the Day: “As much as our culture talks about individual effort and self-improvement, deep down we revere the naturals. We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary. Why not? To me that is so much more amazing.” - Malcolm Gladwell

Agenda:

1. I collected Weekly Quiz #2 from all the students
2. Students self-assess their quizzes as they are returned
3. Review the quiz as a class 
4. The class took notes on decimals
5. We did a ticket to leave (or enter the second class with this problem). This problem was intentionally done wrong by me and students had to state whether it was correct or if there was a math error, what it was and how to fix it.
6. We started the homework by having the students use the marker boards and find the sum of their different problems 
7. The students worked on the rest of the homework independently, which came from the book for the first time this year 

Exit Ticket:

The Assessment: The marker boards are a great way to get students collaborating. It was also an excellent way for me to assess as three to four students had to all be correct at the same time since I was looking for the sum of all the answers in my assessment.

Homework: Page 181-182 of the math textbook, Weekly Quiz #3 was available online for students to work on.

My Glass Half-Full Take: After school I was feeling slightly overwhelmed. And it was Friday. I had to create a decimal quiz and study guide (I know there are some out there but there's always one little flaw that drives me nuts), I had to look over student journals and respond to them, grade the weekly quizzes, prepare the room for Monday, and had several other tasks that I could procrastinate on. Luckily for me I had four eighth grade students randomly show up and ask if I needed help. They did the random tasks that I was going to procrastinate on. They moved and added to my word wall, sharpened colored pencils, wrote the agenda and homework for Monday, made posters about how to solve word problems and some other random tasks. I mindlessly graded papers as they worked and an hour later my mood was altered.

One Thing to Do Differently: I created groups on the fly today. I need to make groups assigned and have students in heterogeneous grouping. I have done this in the past, but it's been harder this year because it's rare that for a whole day I will want to keep the desks in groups since I'm often teaching two different lessons to the same group (one lecture based and one hands on).

Link of the Day: A former colleague introduced me to Edudemic. A lot of top ten lists and tutorials around how best to use technology to your advantage.