Day 9 Operations Quiz

6th Grade Math Standards: Fluently divide multi-digit numbers using the standard algorithm.

The Learning Objective: Solve real-world and mathematical problems using division, multiplication, addition, and subtraction; identify the parts of a division problem, define the answers for each of the four operations

Quote of the Day: “I have always told my teams and my three daughters that getting a D on a test, or even in a course is far from the worst thing one can do. You can recover from that. You can study harder for the next test, you can get a tutor; you can even retake the course. The only bad thing would be if you were to cheat. Cheating means you are giving up on yourself. You lose a piece of yourself each time you violate your personal sense of what is right and what is wrong.” - Coach K

Assessment: The students took the quiz. Overall the results were solid on the vocabulary and identifying the parts of a division problem. We had done pepper and really emphasized this vocabulary all week, so it was great to see the hard work from both students and teachers pay off. Their greatest struggles actually came with subtraction. Here's what I saw a good deal of:

On my end, I never did My Favorite No subtraction with the kids this year. The time that I spent doing this a year ago was reallocated to help students organize their binders. Analyzing common errors in subtraction was something we actually did get a chance to do though through the process of long division. In any case, as this picture illustrates, it's hard to argue that students don't understand what they are doing. This student took from the tens place and even correctly rewrote it after taking from the hundreds place. The student simply did not subtract 11 - 3 correctly. More than their understanding of subtraction, my greater issue is the lack of effort to check the work (even though it was in the directions). I only saw this on a handful of the 67 papers I looked at:

And not to say that there weren't errors with regrouping (also known as place value errors). 

All of this would have easily been fixed by doing what kids demonstrated they could do quite proficiently on the first two problems of the quiz - add two numbers to find a sum. Here is another look at a subtraction error and the easy way to prevent that error from being permanent:

On a small scale, does it even matter anymore that students cannot subtract? In my opinion of course, but there are those out there that say no person will be caught dead without their smart phones and their built in calculators. Even if I concede that point the greater issue to me is that we aren't being thorough enough in our approach. Are we not going to take a second look at the dimensions for the bridges that are being built or the surgery that needs to be done? Getting greater proof and more evidence to prove a point is a critical skill that it appears many students do not possess right now. Then again, maybe I as the teacher did not go over how to check will enough heading into this quiz. And maybe in the effort to do the homework or classwork and just get it done, students are not engaged to want to check the work. In any case, it's a problem. We'll discuss on Monday. 

Agenda:

1. Write homework in the agenda books
2. Take the quiz
3. Read the directions for the quiz
4. Let students work on Pascal's Triangle. If they fill it in correctly, they should try to find at least six patterns that are built in. 
5. Review Pascal's Triangles patterns with the class (start of the second block)
6. Clean out the binder
7. Pass out WQ domination sheet and put it in a sleeve of the binder so it never leaves
8. Pass out WQ parent notification form
9. Pass out WQ #1 and let students start it in class 

Glass Half-Full Take: As I said in the assessment it was actually pretty amazing how well the students did with the vocabulary. In peppering the students with questions throughout the week and even having them do the study guide the previous class, it was apparent that the students did not all initially know what the words product, factor, sum, difference, and quotient meant. This was material that was truly learned.

I don't recall who, but I once heard someone comment that mathematics is only a matter of having a mastery of the vocabulary and carrying out a process. The first half of that was covered well by the students on this quiz much to my delight.

I also was glad to finally have some closure with Pascal's Triangle. This was a week in the making. Most of the students still had their original copy which is proof that the binder is working for these students and organization has never been better collectively to start a year for these students.

One Regret: One final mistake I noticed was with lining up the numbers in a division problem. I tried emphasizing to students that there should be one digit in the quotient for every one digit in the dividend. Usually when I gave this advice it was personal rather than to the class as a whole. I think by saying it aloud as a class on Monday in a chanting/singing fashion we will be able to make the message stickier.

Homework: WQ #1 Parent Slip and WQ #1 rough draft is due on Tuesday of next week

Link of the Day: 5 Wolves and 3 sheep (although I'm going to call it 5 wolves and 3 chickens). I have not solved it yet. And I refuse to look up the answer online.