Math and Texting? OMG!

I am very much immersed in the lesson study process.  Lesson study is the new PLC.  I made what I thought were some great connections in lesson study this week.  


First, what is lesson study?  Lesson study is a chance for a group of teachers to  get "more time" to delve deeper into a standard with their students.  


My group's lesson study is adding fractions with unlike denominators.  A strength of this lesson study cycle has been that our group consists of teachers at three different grade levels- 5th, 6th and7th.  Until Tuesday, we were literally lost in the minutia of fractions- LCD, GCF, numerators, denominators, simplest form, equivalent fractions, can you really call a fraction improper?, mixed numbers, decimals, ratios, division, addition, multiplication, subtraction, like terms, proportions, divisibility, 1/2=0.5=50%, relating fractions to decimals and percents and vice versa, 3/4 = 3 one fourths, etc.  


We have sorted through the minutia and have finalized our lesson.  We will watch one of our colleagues teach this lesson on February 7.  We will observe the lesson.  Our observations will be guided by certain parts of the Standards for Mathematical Practice.  I am excited about applying some of these practices to our lesson observations.  


Standard #6: Attend to Precision, is one I will focus on individually.  


Attending to precision in all parts of math is similar to attending to precision while one is text messaging.  For example: I asked one of my students, how did you get 8/16 to 1/2? The student said, "I divided by eight."  Unfortunately, this student wasn't attending to precision.  I pointed out that if I divided 8/16 by eight, my answer would be 1/4.  So when simplifying 8/16 to 1/2, I would actually divide the numerator and denominator by 8/8.  


Similarly, in texting, if I texted you IDC, but meant to text you IDK, I would have hurt your feelings- unintentionally.  Similarly if I texted you BFN, but meant to text you BFF, I would have hurt your feelings- unintentionally.  In math, as in texting, we can have the best intentions, but without attending to precision we have inaccurate data and hurt feelings. Math should make people happy, just as texting should.  I think that if we teach our students how and why to attend to precision, they will be happy and precise mathematicians/texters!  

Doodle Bugs!

Today with our 2nd/3rd grade buddies we did a fun activity called Doodle Bugs.  It is a shared picture.  Each student gets to roll the number cubes and draw a part of the bug.  One of my students came to the overhead and did a demo with me.  I had to add wings to the bug.  Everyone thought the wings that I drew looked like ears.  It was really funny.  The student then rolled and got to add a dialogue box to the bug.  She didn't know what to write.  One of the students raised his hand and said, "Write, 'My wings are not ears!'"  It was really funny!  Everyone got started with their buddy group.  As I was walking around the room one group of girls had labeled their picture, "Doo Doo Bug."  It was really funny!  Their Doodle Bugs turned out so cute.  They enjoyed working with each other and sharing the picture.  After our buddy activity was over, we had our class meeting.  I started class meeting with a poll: raise your hand if you liked  the activity of Doodle Bugs (29 out of 29 hands went up), raise your hands if you want the chance to do another Doodle Bug with your buddy (29 out of 29 hands went up).  This activity made me laugh so much!  But perhaps more importantly, this activity comes from our Caring School Community curriculum. It was such a great way to build a caring school community across three grade levels.  Ironically, I was talking to a parent after school about her child being in the county spelling bee.  The younger sibling came up and she was one of our buddies.  We started talking about both children's buddies over the past two years since the kids were new to the school last year.  In our short side conversation about buddies, we made a lot of connections- a community!

First Blog!

My class finished reading our class book, A Wrinkle it Time, this week.  Many of their thoughts about the book were that it finally got good at the end and now it's over!  This made me think about what I could have done to make the learning experience "good" throughout the entire book- which happens to be one of my favorites.  Throughout the reading we did quick writes, sketches, identified similes and metaphors, defined new vocabulary and discussed the plot, characters and settings.