Day 136 Plan A Party Part II

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

6.NS.4 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).

6.G.1 Find the area of right triangles, other triangles, special quadrilaterals, and polygons by composing into rectangles or decomposing into triangles and other shapes; apply these techniques in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems.

The Learning Objective: Use decimal and greatest common factor calculations in a real-world context.

Agenda:

1. Finish floor plans of the plan-a-party worksheet
2. Make the calculations for inviting 30 people to a party (invitations come in packs of 8, plates come in packs of 25, etc.). Students also had to consider the prices of these items
3. Begin Weekly Quiz #23

The Assessment: All Plan-A-Party will be collected by myself of Monday. I circumvented the room today and noticed that students seemed to be understanding the problem well enough.

Glass Half-Full: Today was a half-day and a Friday, so it's always harder to teach. Students are naturally a little more energized and many of them are confused by little issues such as how long class will be and if we will have lunch on a day like today. When we were planning this day about a week ago, none of the math teachers really anticipated the student attitude in our planning. It was not until Wednesday after the students were done MCAS testing that we decided to do a U-turn and try a mini project for this class and yesterday's classes. I was the most resistant to this change as I wanted to get right back in the routine, but today being as hard as it was to transition from class to class it was nice to have students at least know what was going to be asked of them in math class. The level of independence the students had with the class today was much higher than it would have been had we been doing a lesson with interquartile range as we had originally planned.

One Regret: It might not have done much harm if I had had students work on this whole project with a partner and had both partners submit an assignment. As it were, many students were asking questions of one another anyway.

I find this to be a common occurrence in my classroom. Very often we are doing activities that require a partner anyway and the desks are also arranged in groups of two. Over the years I have increasingly stopped fighting the idea of letting students help other students. The reality is that eventually all students are going to have to be capable of working collaboratively (even though in the immediate future they are tested independently).

Link of the Day: This article discusses the relevance of arrests in the classroom and advocates that police can cause more harm than good in schools. On average Massachusetts has about 2 arrests for every 1000 students. That is one of the lowest rates in the country