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.