Opening Bellringer
I haven't really talked about our opening routine much, but basically we complete a blank multiplication chart to a musical accompaniment. Then, we discuss the "expression" date and explore that value as a product. I will go into a bit more detail tomorrow about what that all looks like.
Clothesline Math
I have done clothesline type activities in the past, but I might a lot of revisions to my approach based on watching Chris Shore model it at TMC17. I knew that I wanted to focus on exploring negative values, but wasn't sure if we should work through one number line or a series. Ultimately, I decided to use two Illustrative Tasks as inspiration (here and here) and we worked through three separate number line tasks. Today served as another chance to reinforce how we share our opinions (standing up, waiting until the audience is listening, justify our arguments) and we referenced back to our Math Habits frequently throughout the lesson.
- Clothesline One: I gave the benchmarks of 0 and 1, students placed 3, 4, and -1. This led to conversation about negative values as being less than zero. Some classes were very precise with their spacing which caused us to detour a bit into appropriate tools and whether linear units could be anything.
- Clothesline Two: I gave the benchmarks of 0 and 3, students placed 5, -5, and -3. This led to some conversations about negative values meaning the opposite. We talked about the symmetry of this number line, with a student in my 7th period offering that she supported the spacing a group had suggested because it looked like a mirror.
- Clothesline Three: I gave the benchmarks of 0 and 1, students placed -2, -4 and -(-2). This was the mind blowing moment. It was really exciting to watch the groups that had a revelation about -(-2). With a few of the classes, I did have to reference back to what we'd talked about so far with the meaning of negative values, but ultimately the students arrived at the right conclusion with a little bit of discussion and debate amongst them. A few classes are already learning that Ms. Packer loves a good math argument.
While groups worked at the board to present, other groups were working at their desks on the whiteboards to create their own models. I encouraged them to check with one another at their groups to find points of agreement and disagreement to discuss.
We didn't record our final conclusions this time because we haven't created our first page of notes in our INB, but I may add that on to our next clothesline activity. We did follow up our consensus on each number line by having students offer out comparison statements of values on the number line (i.e. "-3 is less than 3") which I recorded on the board with conventional symbols. Any group that wasn't at the board was accountable for a comparison statement.
Is it Positive or Negative?
Only two of the five classes engaged in this activity and one of them did so very briefly. I had found a worksheet that lists a series of situations with the request to ascertain if the situation being represented is positive or negative. In the past, students have responded to these prompts using color cards to indicate positive or negative. I have found that several of these scenarios have a bit of ambiguity to them so I really encouraged students today to be prepared to justify their choice. We talked about how these scenarios could be either positive or negative depending on the point of view. For example,
Susan picked thirty-eight apples from the orchard.Most students indicated this scenario as being positive (i.e. "Susan gained apples."), but a few argued that it would be negative from the perspective of the orchard (i.e. "The orchard's inventory decreased apples."). The activity gave us further practice on constructing viable arguments and also seeing how negative values could be useful in a real world context.
Support for Personalized Learning Begins
Today was my first day with my SPL group. I will be working with this group for nine weeks in an effort to remediate some weaknesses in their math understanding. Based on students data, we know that fraction sense has been a pervasive weakness in our student population so it is going to be my focus of instruction. Today, we launched the period by playing Fraction Math Match just to get ourselves thinking about fractional representations. The two classes of the room played against one another and were very engaged particularly for the end of the day.
We moved from that activity into a Fraction Splat. I discovered Steve Wyborney's Fractions Splats last spring and have been eager to try them out ever since. I was not disappointed. The students were highly engaged and had some great conversation about strategies as we worked through lesson 11.1. I will definitely be using it frequently throughout this SPL Period.
The students in band had to leave at the start of 9th period, so the remaining students and I finished out the day by looking at Day 2 of Estimation 180. They had worked on Day 1 in our regular class periods so the dynamic was changed up a bit to have them work with new groups and still focus on creating a visual model and use precision with our units. We ended the day with a good conversation about whether 5.5 feet means 5 feet 5 inches or 5 feet 6 inches.
My Prideful Moment of Nostalgia
I spent a bit of my
planning period today observing in the 7th grade classroom. These were my
students from last year and I absolutely adore them! They were introducing
ratios and I was pleased to see how much overlap there was between her presentation
of the material and what they had learned last year. When I ended my day
at bus duty, several former students came running up enthusiastically to tell
me what they were working on. They recounted the definition of a ratio and the
ways to write ratios. A few of them also told me that they had been using their
INBs from last year to review and refresh. I couldn't be prouder of that
crew!
I really do love my job!
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