Monday, October 13, 2014

IMP Math Day 11...I think...Hats for the Family

Today is actually the day that I introduced the Haybaler POW. I explained to the students that it took me a couple of tries before I figured it out. I had to stop and retry the problem later with a different approach. I told my students today that there was not a teacher's edition for these new textbooks - there is only a teacher's guide. When I told them that I had to work through the problems myself I asked them if they liked that and most of them seemed to.

We also started working on the Hats for the Family activity. I found it very difficult to help "guide" the students without just working through it for them. I actually took a girl's pencil from her and showed her how to find the minimum number of people in the large family. Took her pencil!!  I didn't know how to tell her without showing her. But then I took that opportunity away from her and her group. Bad teacher! In the next class I did give them hints without completely working it out for them. I glanced at this activity without working through it myself. I understand why it is so important to work through the material yourself. It is difficult to guide them through the activity without just telling them how to find the answers if you didn't have to think through it yourself. I am excited that we are going to have our first PD on the curriculum this week. I think that we will feel much better about presenting the material after having a veteran IMP teacher go through some of it with us.

My 5th period working on Pulling Out Rules today. It was cool to see them arrive at the fact that to say the input was doubled was the same as saying to multiply the input by 2 AND to add the input to itself.

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