Day 29 Quiz Review & Introduction to Open Response

6th Grade Math Standards: Find the greatest common factor of two whole numbers less than or equal to 100 and the least common multiple of two whole numbers less than or equal to 12. Use the distributive property to express a sum of two whole numbers 1–100 with a common factor as a multiple of a sum of two whole numbers with no common factor. For example, express 36 + 8 as 4(9 + 2).
MA.4.a. Apply number theory concepts, including prime factorization and relatively prime
numbers, to the solution of problems.

The Learning Objective: Find the least common multiple of two numbers.

Quote of the Day: "A baby elephant is trained at birth to be confined to a very small space. Its trainer will tie its leg with a rope to a wooden post planted deep in the ground. This confines the baby elephant to an area determined by the length of the rope – the elephant’s comfort zone. Though the baby elephant will initially try to break the rope, the rope is too strong, and so the baby elephant learns that it can’t break the rope. It learns that it has to stay in the area defined by the length of the rope.

When the elephant grows up into a 5-ton colossus that could easily break the same rope, it doesn’t even try because it learned as a baby that it couldn’t break the rope. In this way, the largest elephant can be confined by the puniest little rope.

Perhaps this also describes you – still trapped in a comfort zone by something as puny and weak as the small rope and stake that controls the elephant, except your rope is made up of the limiting beliefs and images that you received and took on when you were young.

How many times have we taught that we couldn’t do something simply because we couldn’t do it in the past? Do not allow your past to stop you from doing what you want to do today. You’re a different person today than you were yesterday."
Agenda:

1. Self-Assessment checklist completed by students on the decimal quiz
2. Students journal about their decimal quizzes. They write about their mistakes and what they did well.
3. We review the decimal quiz as well as Weekly Quiz #3
4. We review the directions for Weekly Quiz #4. The first thing that I had to do for students was give them the acronym RACER which they will use throughout the year as a way to help them organize open response questions. It stands for restate, answer with computation, explain, and reread the question.
5. I reviewed with students the value of showing the work and explaining the work.
6. I showed the students a video of the weekly quiz with kids from our school selling cookies  and muffins and giving them away for free on occasion. It was made of course for this weekly quiz. 
7. The students did each of the four parts as part of their rough copy for Weekly Quiz #4. 
8. We reviewed the lesson on paperclips from Friday by glancing over a spreadsheet that shows how it is possible to know how many paperclips can be put together in any amount of time by knowing how many were put together in 24 hours. 

The Assessment: I literally went around the room and inspected papers on Weekly Quiz #4 to see what students were writing. In some cases students weren't writing anything at all. In which case of course I told them to start writing. I had more empathy than usual (see link of the day below to see why).

Homework: The students had to complete Weekly Quiz #4 as a rough draft.

My Glass Half-Full Take: The students struggled with the weekly quiz and usually when I have students raising their hand in ten different directions I grow frustrated. Today I did not. That's because I knew they were going to say "I don't get it" partially because they were saying "I don't get it." Instead of worrying about teaching them all the magic secrets of multiplying by four and dividing by six, I kept insisting that they will get it. I smiled at them as I said it. Not in a "na na na na boo boo you can't get me" sort of way. More the "I believe in you - press on" sort of way. And I would add make a chart or draw a picture after I smiled.

The fact of the matter is that the struggle that happened today will happen again in May when they are tested. At that point, they will be allowed no help. So they will be helpless unless I give them good advice today. And today I sensed that good advice was better than spoon feeding. The kids might not have felt the same way, but part of problem solving is persisting.

One Thing to Do Differently: I wish I had a poster or something at the front of the room to point to when students were stuck. I did start to tell students to use a too high too low on question D. This was very helpful for some students in recognizing the number of muffins sold could not be greater than 29 since less muffins were given away than cookies. That said, going forward on hard problems I want students to make charts, draw pictures, write equations, use analogous numbers or think of a similar problem they've already done. And that needs to be clear all the time to the students.

Link of the Day: It always helps to understand from a student's perspective what happens during the day. This account came from a career teacher recently turned math coach. They sit and they are perceived as a nuisance for much of the day. Lesson here for me is to get them out of their seat more (even if it has nothing to do with teaching math) and to give them a break when calling them out for talking. After all I'm often the person that waits until the person is done explaining and then turn to the person next to me to explain it all over again.