Day 41: MCAS Scores & Double Number Line

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

Quote of the Day: “Marva Collins taught Chicago children who had been judged and discarded. For many, her classroom was their last stop. One boy had been in and out of thirteen schools in four years. One stabbed children with pencils and had been thrown out of a mental health center. One eight-year-old would remove the blade from the pencil sharpener and cut up his classmates’ coats, hats, gloves, and scarves. One hit another student with a hammer on his first day. These children hadn’t learned much in school, but everyone knew it was their own fault. Everyone except Mrs. Collins. When 60 Minutes did a segment on Collins’s classroom, Morley Safer [the person doing the interview] tried his best to get a child to say he didn’t like the school. ‘It’s so hard here. There’s no recess. There’s no gym. They work you all day. You have only forty minutes for lunch. Why do you like it? It’s just too hard.’ But the student replied, ‘That’s why I like it, because it makes your brain bigger.’

Question of the Day: "What's a tape diagram?"

Objective: Interpret your MCAS score; compare two quantities in a double number line

Agenda:

1. MCAS scores explained and review for a whole block by the Title I math teacher
2. Get to 10 
3. QSSQ
4. Homework Review
5. Gummy Bears 

Assessment: I did the first ratio of 23 grams to 10 bears and then had the students fill in the corresponding amount of grams for 20, 30, 40, and 50 bears.

Glass Half-Full: The MCAS review I think was very helpful as far as giving students a wake up call for those that needed the wake up call. Last week for instance on the weekly quiz, only 25% of students in one class got a 100. Now this is a quiz in which I will literally stay after with kids and do the problems with them if the students would like. It's heavily impacted by how much effort is given. These students needed a wake up call.

Regrets: There were also students that did not need a wake up call. For these students that did maybe not as well as they would like, hopefully they don't feel hopeless! These students are working hard and doing their best to reach their potential, so I think good things will come whether the MCAS is reviewed with them or not. And at the end of the day, the MCAS is like the Super Bowl. They can't get to that game and succeed without a great preseason, regular season, and playoffs leading up to that moment. I think we need to continue to draw upon the day to day importance as the bigger part of the process for getting better.

Link: Children and spatial reasoning.