I had observation #2 for the year this morning in math. Honestly, I was REALLY dreading it. Math has never been my strongest area, both as a a teacher and as a student. In fact, in elementary school I pretty much sucked at math. The orderly, organized part of me loves the logic of being able to follow a formula and plug in numbers once I "get it," but the creative, language part of me reeeeally struggles with that whole "getting it" piece. As you can imagine, this means that I often have a tough time teaching it. Now, I'm pretty solid in teaching math, but with a really low group of kids (like the one I have this year), I am often at a loss when it comes to trying to find ANOTHER way to explain a concept that I have already tried to teach without success.
Anyways, math this year hasn't exactly been the smoothest. The kids are really lacking confidence and are very needy, and with just 1 of me it's hard to get through lessons some days. But we are plugging along nonetheless... When I scheduled my observation, I soon realized that it would be for the FIRST day of our new math unit, tackling, guess what....DIVISION! (dum dum duummmm.....) Division is practically a swear word to the average fifth grader. It always was to me!!! In fact, when I student taught, I had to have my cooperating teacher give me a little "division refresher" one day after school before I felt confident enough to teach it to the class...embarrassing, I know...
I decided to kick off division with a VERY basic, hand-on lesson to hammer home the concept behind division. I think that half of making struggling students understand math is teaching them in a very real-life, concrete form, THEN coming in with the strategies, tricks, and formulas. We read the picture book The Doorbell Rang, a story about a family that is sharing 12 cookies, but the doorbell keeps ringing with more friends coming over. Obviously, after each time the doorbell rings, the number of cookies that each child gets to eat becomes less and less as they are divided between more and more people. We all enjoyed using Cookie Crisp cereal to work out the answers to the problems, and the kids practiced writing division problems using the bar symbol on dry erase boards. One of the goofiest parts of a division problem is that not only is is set up complete backwards of the other math opeations that are solved from top to bottom, but the problems are read from right to left!!! As if kids weren't already confused enough...
The lesson was a success, and the kids LOVED that Mister Principal sat at a desk and did all of the work right along with them. As with any "exciting" lesson, there was plenty of shouting out, but it was all on task and I feel like I handled it well. I'd prefer a little engaged ruckus to the alternative any day...While the kiddos are by no means division masters yet, I'm optimistic about the unit and just hope we make it through in 1 piece. Oh division...Now, I wonder how many other lessons I can work cookies into...hmm...
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