A Busy Day Back

Today was my first day teaching the entire morning with math and reading. It was very busy so we were constantly on our feet helping the kids, working with technology and getting materials prepared. In math today, the students learned how to write cents in two different ways. One way is using the cent symbol they are use to and the other way is to write it out using a dollar sign. The students caught onto this really fast so the math went by rather quickly as the students completed their worksheets. I also designed a clock practice sheet which the students used along  with small clocks to practice telling time. The students have been somewhat struggling to get their little hand as the hour and big hand as the minutes. We practiced turning the clock hands to set specific times. I used the larger Judy clock in the front of the room to ask them questions about what time I had set. This activity seemed to help many of the struggling students, and was also a great review for other students.

Fraction Fun with Tangrams

The students were able to do an activity today that was really hands on. I was only at the school during the morning today, as I had a mandatory student teacher meeting to attend at the University from 1:15- 4:00pm. However, the time I did spend with the students this morning was so much fun and they did an excellent job! We started math with the meeting board as usual and the students were able to find the answer to my somewhat tricky pattern of the day which ended up being add 1, add 2 and repeat. So their problem looked similar to 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48, etc.. For the main lesson we went over how to write a number in expanded form. So for example the students learned that to write 473 in expanded form means to write 400+70+3= 473. This concept really helps students understand place value and that when reading a number you really are just putting together the digits in each place from the ones to hundreds in order to create a number.