Day 3 Organizing Binder & Word Problem Strategy

6th Grade Math Standards: MP.1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

The Learning Objective: Circle what you know and highlight what you are trying to find; add whole numbers; subtract multi-digit whole numbers; define sum and difference

Quote of the Day: “During the final play-off of a U.S. Open tournament, Bobby Jones’s ball ended up in the rough just off the fairway. As he set up to play his shot, he accidentally caused his ball to move. He immediately turned to the marshals and announced the foul. The marshals discussed the situation among themselves. They hadn’t seen the ball move. Neither did anyone in the gallery. They left it up to Jones whether to take the penalty stroke, which he did. Later, when a marshal commended Jones on his high level of integrity, Jones replied, ‘Do you commend a bank robber for not robbing a bank? No you don’t. This is how the game of golf should be played at all times.’ Jones lost the match that day - by one stroke. But he didn’t lose his integrity.” - John Maxwell

The Assessment: Toward the end of class the teachers checked off two of the first three problems that students completed.

Agenda:

1. NFL Home Field Advantage Jumpstart/Check homework
2. Review and debate the jumpstart
3. Organize the binders 
4. Notes on the first two steps of word problems. The first step is to reiterate what we know and what we're trying to find out. The second step is to develop a plan to solve (make a chart, solve a similar problem, draw a picture, write an equation, guess and check, etc.)
5. Define sum and difference
6. Pepper with the terms sum and difference
7. Write the homework in the agenda book
8. Distribute the homework which was Review A 
9. Do the first problem with the students. Many students will prefer to do the homework on the worksheet so it's important to emphasize it needs to be done in the spiral notebook
10. Let students do the rest of the problems on their own while the teachers check off on numbers 2 and 3

Glass Half-Full Take: The binder set up was more thorough than I have ever done. In the past, I have not helped students at all with this process. I finally recognized after several years of students struggling organizationally that spending a block today can save me and the students down the line. I started with the most basic of instructions which was to put their names inside their notebook and on the cover of their binders as well as the class and room number. More than half of the students did not have this already, so it was time well spent.

Next, we broke down each part of the binder. I told students to keep a multiplication chart in the front part of their binder. That was followed by the three tabs (daily, weekly quizzes, and tests/quizzes). The last part of the binder consisted of the rest of the sleeve protectors.

After we had constructed the binders I emphasized how important it was for students to put all math papers in the binder and not the folder. I timed them opening and closing the three rings (less than five seconds) and encouraged them to take the time to put papers away rather than waiting to do it later or sliding them into the agenda book. All the bad habits that I have seen so frequently throughout the last couple of years I am trying to stop now and I feel much more confident in the binder system this year than I ever have.

One other positive from this day was that we took another step forward in the routine. I reminded students about the importance of having homework out before beginning work on the jumpstart so that I could do my job while they did theirs.

One Regret: I wanted to do My Favorite No with the students on a common subtraction mistake and to introduce the routine, but as a result of taking pictures today we had to shorten the class times and did not have time to fit it in.

We could have fit it in if I had eliminated the NFL Home Field Advantage warm up, but given that today is the first Patriots game and this has some excellent questions that we could debate (including number four which was terrific in one class) I think that this assignment was worth our time. In the future I might tell students to skip ahead to problem number four because I only give about 10 minutes to do this assignment.

Homework: Review worksheet A (18 addition and subtraction review problems including three word problems).

Link of the Day: 10 almost completely free sources for an interactive classroom.