Day 27: The Study Guide for 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, subtract, multiply and divide multi-digit decimals.

Quote of the Day: Nails in the Fence:

"There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His Father gave him a

bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer

a nail into the back of the fence.

The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few

weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered

daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his

temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally the day came when

the boy didn't lose his temper at all.

He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out

one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed

and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were

gone.

The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, “Youhave done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. But it won't matter how many times you say I'm sorry, the wound will still be there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.”

Agenda:

1. Jumpstart - Estimation 180 Days 28 and 29
2. Review the homework with the class. What is a unit cost? Was the most popular question I heard from students. 
3. Frayer Model with the 4 major operations in a word problem and out a word problem. Most students took a while before noticing that the same problem was on there twice. Students did this with their math partners
4. Study guide done with the math partner
5. If time allowed the students worked on the weekly quiz

The Assessment: I circumvented the room to see how students were progressing. In partners, I do find less errors of course with the whole two heads are better than one concept. Students struggled most with the concept of 9 - 0.7. One of my colleagues put together what we called a "vintage model" using decimal grids and taping it to a poster. I brought it into my last class and they loved it. Note to self next year I'm stealing that idea for my class too (per usual my colleague asked if she wanted to make one for me - it helps to work with people willing to share).

Homework: Students were asked to study for the decimal quiz tomorrow and do the weekly quiz which is also due tomorrow. In one class I told students that if they did not have their weekly quiz it would be a session. I wish I had done this in all classes but I didn't think to!

My Glass Half-Full Take: With one of my students that was struggling, I asked him to tell me the difference between when we slide decimals in division problems and when the decimal gets brought straight up in the quotient after I explained it to him ten seconds before. He nailed it. I too often explain to students in a one on one setting and then abandon them to go throw a life raft to a different group of students. I think the approach here was more effective because I could sense the effort that went into this student explaining it to me.

I'm also looking forward to the first day of Math Academy tomorrow. This is a club in our school that is run before school (a half hour before) that gives students who are passionate about math to work collaboratively on challenging problems. It includes all three grades in the middle school so I get to work with many former students. We're going to be investigating two visual pattern problems among others.

One Thing to Do Differently: Today we had a school fundraiser "The Rollathon." As a result a little over an hour of academic time was cut meaning that every class was a little shorter. This obviously caused confusion as anything out of the routine typically does. As a result of the shorter classes, if I was to do this lesson again I would want to add in a piece about reflection from the study guide (similar to my glass half-full story) where a student recounts a mistake they made and explains the correction. With more time on a typical day this would be possible. That said, The Rollathon was a great success. Money was raised for field trips, the kids had a great time, and I got to feed the math curriculum asking every lap the students ran how far they had run (7 laps divided by 4 laps for one mile is equal to 1.75 miles).

Link of the Day: