Week 4 Just About Halfway Through the First Quarter

Wow was I busy last week. I usually had time to stop at home and grab some dinner, but 30 minutes later I was out the door again and not home until at least 8:30. The weekend didn't bring any respite, we drove to Lisle for a marching band competition and picked up a dryer along the way. I was up until 11:30 catching up on laundry, then up again at 5:30 to clean the basement and backyard for a some up coming construction. I did finish by 3 so I could grade papers and go shopping which is good, at least I won't go hungry next week.

The problem with such a busy week it that I also had to spend hours on Sunday grading papers. I would rather return the work the day after with notes so we can integrate the feedback into lessons. Come Monday morning most of my students, and myself, will have forgotten what we did on individual days so looking at old papers is hard. You have to remember the assignment and think back to what you were thinking at the time and then try to make sense of the feedback. It really isn't an ideal situation.

I'm contemplating adjusting my schedule so we can review the work together. Or maybe just those students who haven't gotten the hang of it yet. So I just took the time to review my lesson plan for the week and it's like I was planning for this on Friday. Most of my students have the area idea down, not just for rectangles, but triangles, and circles as well. We started some fractional areas last week, it is a great way to explore multiplication of fractions and the distributive property. I think I will let some of my students work independently on those projects while I reteach students who still struggle with the basics. I had even made a list, just seconds before starting to write this blog post, of students who need one on one help so I'm ready to go. Just have to remember to make two different activities for tomorrow.

I think one more whole class exploration of fractional areas especially multiplying two fractions and we will be ready to go. In the middle of the week I am going to introduce a thought process graphical organizer. Then end the week with a summative quiz on finding area/multiplication. My only real worry is that I gave out a homework assignment with area problems, but it didn't use graph paper and quite a few of my students were completely confused. I'll have to make sure to review that homework before Friday.

I'm a bit proud of the problem solving worksheet, I'd love to have a bit of feedback on it.

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