Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Day 168 Menu Math

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 decimals in a real-world context

The Assessment: The students did a problem on their own and I checked their work by looking at what they got for the tax based on their total.

Agenda:

  1. Review and pass back olympics work
  2. Discussion on restaurants and what a customer might pay for (meal, tip, tax)
  3. Example of a menu done by me
  4. Students did a menu with the help of their neighbor if necessary
  5. Students did two menu problems on their own
  6. Students created four meals for four people in which they had to buy a meal, dessert, and beverage


Glass Half-Full Take: I initially thought that students would be turned off from this assignment but giving them a physical menu with pictures was apparently appealing enough. Students were able to do this, and although they needed me to "hold their hand," they were able to find how the tax impacted the price of the overall meal (assuming a 5% tax rate).

One Regret: The space to do out the work was just in their notebook. There was no template to help students that had trouble organizing. I also like the idea of writing the price above the item on the menu and then putting the price for several items in the margin (apologies for not showing pictures but there's copyright information to worry about it).

Link of the Day: A bunch of ideas for utilizing Instagram in the classroom. I'm not on Instagram but obviously this is something to consider.

Day 166 Olympics Days 2-4

6th Grade Math Standards: 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.
MA.1.a.Use the relationships among radius, diameter, and center of a circle to find its circumference and area.

The Learning Objective: Recognize and communicate mathematical errors

Agenda:

  1. Review yesterday's mistakes and the quote of the day
  2. Olympic Video on the United States vs. Spain in Basketball
  3. Work on Olympics Questions
  4. Exit Ticket


The Assessment: Give an example of a moment in class when your partner pointed out a mistake to you or you caught yourself before you were about to make a mistake.

Glass Half-Full Take: I had the stations lined up 1- 6 on the desks to make the transition from station to station easier and explained this to classes today. It made for much easier movement in the classroom and significantly less chaos or minor issues that I did not need to step in and solve.

One Regret: I think that students rely too much on their partner and take advantage of the situation by being lazy. Unfortunately three negative consequences result from this lack of effort. First, the partner gets something wrong by making a simple mistake which could have been caught up front had both students done the work. Second, it makes it harder for me to fairly assess both students on the task. Third, and most obviously, a student is not doing the work and therefore not learning to their potential.

To change this requires something more than simply imploring both students to do work. It requires more than me stating that students can receive two different grades while working on the same project (which I told the students). It requires even more than asking that different students write at different stations (which I did ask and explain in the opening directions for the project). I think one thing I could do is give each paper a heading that asks who the recorder is at each station. That could be a reminder to students. That only helps this issue a little. On a deeper level, the students need to be educated on reaching their individual potential within the fabric of a group. And this is something that needs to be executed over the course of 180 days (and then some).

Link of the Day: The Olympics site has been very helpful in terms of giving students vivid pictures of the games. They also would prefer to watch the videos on the the site the whole class if I let them.

Monday, June 1, 2015

Day 165 Answering Olympic Questions

6th Grade Math Standards: Too numerous to name all of them but just to name a few:

6.SP.4 Display numerical data in plots on a number line, including dot plots, histograms, and box plots.

6.RP.3 Use ratio and rate reasoning to solve real-world and mathematical problems, e.g., by reasoning about tables of equivalent ratios, tape diagrams, double number line diagrams, or equations.
a. Make tables of equivalent ratios relating quantities with whole-number measurements, find missing values in the tables, and plot the pairs of values on the coordinate plane. Use tables to compare ratios.
b. Solve unit rate problems, including those involving unit pricing and constant speed. For example, if it took 7 hours to mow 4 lawns, then, at that rate, how many lawns could be mowed in 35 hours? At what rate were lawns being mowed?
c. 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.
d. Use ratio reasoning to convert measurement units; manipulate and transform units appropriately when multiplying or dividing quantities.

6.NS.1 Interpret and compute quotients of fractions, and solve word problems involving division of fractions by fractions, e.g., by using visual fraction models and equations to represent the problem. For example, create a story context for (2/3) ÷ (3/4) and use a visual fraction model to show the quotient; use the relationship between multiplication and division to explain that (2/3) ÷ (3/4) = 8/9 because 3/4 of 8/9 is 2/3. (In general, (a/b) ÷ (c/d) = ad/bc .) How much chocolate will each person get if 3 people share 1/2 lb of chocolate equally? How many 3/4-cup servings are in 2/3 of a cup of yogurt? How wide is a rectangular strip of land with length 3/4 mi and area 1/2 square mi?

The Objective: Find the area of a circle (among others)

Agenda:

  1. Review the weekly quiz from the previous week
  2. Olympics Video on Hand Ball
  3. Finish questions from the last class (if necessary)
  4. Start the Olympics Questions

The Assessment: I asked students to list one thing that their partner or they remembered right before they were going to make a mistake. I told them I was awarding the bronze, silver, and gold best responses tomorrow in class. I want students to become more critical of the fact that they are always making mistakes and that this is only a step toward learning and mastery. Reading The Talent Code has had a big impact on this way of thinking.





Glass Half-Full: I did not get to work with many students on the olympic questions today because I was individually giving groups feedback for the vacation projects which took forever and a day to correct. As a result, the ticket to leave was created as a way for me to measure how effective or ineffective groups were at self-monitoring their work ethic and accuracy in the math portion of the task.

One Regret: I wish I was more clear about where students should put their folders when class ended and also that they should put their names on every sheet as soon as they got these sheets because it is quite easy to become disorganized with this unit.

Link of the Day: Norway has prisons that resemble something closer to a hospital. And that's a really good thing. According to this article from NPR, Norway has one-tenth the number of prisoners as the United States and prisoners are half as likely to commit the same crime once they are out of jail.

Day 164 Presentations & Starting Olympics Unit

6th Grade Math Standards: 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.
MA.1.a.Use the relationships among radius, diameter, and center of a circle to find its circumference and area.
MA.1.b. Solve real-world and mathematical problems involving the measurements of circles.
2. Find the volume of a right rectangular prism with fractional edge lengths by packing it with unit cubes of the appropriate unit fraction edge lengths, and show that the volume is the same as would be found by multiplying the edge lengths of the prism. Apply the formulas V = lwh and V = bh to find volumes of right rectangular prisms with fractional edge lengths in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems.
3. Draw polygons in the coordinate plane given coordinates for the vertices; use coordinates to find the length of a side joining points with the same first coordinate or the same second coordinate. Apply these techniques in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems.
4. Represent three-dimensional figures using nets made up of rectangles and triangles, and use the nets to find the surface areas of these figures. Apply these techniques in the context of solving real-world and mathematical problems.

The Objective: Ask math related questions relevant to a picture or part of a story given by a picture

Agenda:

  1. Collect all weekly quizzes
  2. Continue with the presentations from the vacation projects
  3. Explain the directions to the Olympics Unit
  4. Visit six different stations and get students to answer ask different questions based on the picture (similar theme to 101 Questions)


The Assessment: I got the opportunity to see students questions and also gave presenting groups instant feedback. Weekly quizzes were corrected and graded. Many students failed to recognize that "less expensive" is not the same thing as equally expensive.

Glass Half-Full: This lesson is always a good way to give students the opportunity to get out of their seat several times and create movement breaks in the class. I find that students with attention problems are less susceptible to needing me to prompt them during the olympic unit because every five to ten minutes I have them going to another part of the classroom to find a picture they happen to need.

One Regret: The directions I gave could have been better. When we had to visit the stations, students were unclear as to what they were supposed to do. I could have done an example with them or at least given written directions in addition to oral directions.

Link of the Day: Have a math picture? I guess you share it here this summer.

Day 163 Presentations

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.NS.2; Guiding Principle 5: Literacy across the content areas

The Objective: Present mathematical findings to an audience

Agenda: The students were given rubrics to remind them what I was looking for in their presentations (the same rubrics were given the day before). I also gave students a separate sheet that asked them to write one piece of positive feedback for their peers. The feedback could be regarding how they presented their vacation or just something about their vacation in general.

The Assessment: The rubrics that are linked here were given to students as well comments to give them feedback about presenting a finding.

Glass Half-Full: In six years of teaching I've never had a day where students present orally to one another about what they had done. It was actually quite enjoyable for both student and teacher. Today might have made the entire project and the hardships it came with worthwhile. Here's a look at one presentation:



One Regret: Not having exemplars gave students a harder time of knowing what exactly it was that I wanted from. I am going to hang onto a couple posters and also some videos that students submitted to better help students with the expectations of the project for next year.

Link of the Day: This toolkit from the UK delves into the cost and proof of different interventions toward helping students at risk.

Day 162 Posters, Commercials, etc.

6th Grade Math Standards: 6.NS.2

The Objective: Find an average of a data set with decimals, subtract whole numbers from decimals and decimals from whole numbers.

Agenda: Students worked with their partner on the project and presentation.

The Assessment: I corrected weekly quizzes and then gave customized feedback to students as they were working on their projects.

Glass Half-Full: As the learning needs teacher on my team point out it was great to see that students could be self-starters in their own creative visions for this project. I am typically not one to let students wonder this far away from me but in this case I wanted creativity and my mind would cause students to become focused on the wrong idea (pleasing me) rather than doing something that they enjoyed.

One Regret: The project did not involve any new levels of math today. Students simply had to reiterate math that they had already used in previous classes. Today SchoolWorks was in to observe and it was probably one of five days this year where I was not really concerned with the math that students did (the other days being MCAS days and the first two days of school).

Link of the Day: New York Times article courtesy of Dan Meyer (although he had a completely different selling point about using this as a template for graphing) regarding the correlation between parental income and children's likelihood to attend college.