Day 50: Find the Whole Given a Part

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.RP.3c Find a percent of a quantity as a rate per 100 (e.g., 30% of a quantity means 30/100 times the quantity); solve problems involving finding the whole, given a part and the percent.

6.NS.6c Find and position integers and other rational numbers on a horizontal or vertical number line 
diagram; find and position pairs of integers and other rational numbers on a coordinate plane.
The Learning Objective: Find the whole given a part.

Quote of the Day: “So often we fail to acknowledge what we have because we’re so concerned about what we want. We fail to give real thanks for the many blessings for which we did nothing: our life itself, the flowers, the trees, our family and friends. This moment. All of our blessings we take for granted so much of the time.” - John Wooden

Agenda:

1. Jumpstart - tipping at a restaurant
2. Review the homework
3. Proportions visually
4. Notes
5. My Favorite No. "Isabel got a 70% on her quiz. She answered 21 questions correctly. How many questions were on the quiz?" 
6. Stations - Frayer Model, homework practice, and shopping activity

The Assessment: Students did the last two problems from the notes independently. During stations I had students working in groups of three to four and I sat mostly at the Frayer Model station assessing these students ability to differentiate between a proportion was and was not.

The my favorite no was only done in 2 out of 3 classes. I simply forgot in the middle class.

I looked at the students work from the previous night. The problem that I saw was that students were incorrectly answering the questions that required them to find a new price of something when a percentage was taken off of a number (they didn't subtract).

There was also the jumpstart which challenged all students. Only about three to five got it all day. That was expected because of the way it was worded, but I think it is so essential to teach students how to find a tip.

Homework: Weekly Quiz #8 was made available online. I also had students complete the homework practice if it was not done in class.

My Glass Half-Full Take: The stations activity was done on the fly today as I spoke with colleagues about what they were doing in class during my prep. It was a great way to run Friday afternoon as it gave students the opportunity to get out of their seats about every 10 minutes and got them actively talking about the math instead of having me lecturing.

One Thing to Do Differently: This is such a hard to topic to master. It's hard to say I'd do anything differently for one day, but I know that students would be better off with more time. I think the first concept to master is something like finding 100% of a number, 10% of a number or 1% of a number. I had not taught students this until the end of today's lesson. Having that background though goes a long way toward making sense of answers.

Also, a too high too low with word problems is helpful. In the my favorite no picture above, how can we get 0.4 questions on a test in which there were 21 questions answered correctly?

Link of the Day: Multi-taskers are lousy at multitasking.