April 14, 2010 Observation 5

Today the class I observed worked on fraction, creative writing, and researched facts about Maryland. The class used a pizza model to represent fractions. They “sliced” their pizza 4 or 8 times (depending on skill level) and then shaded in the slices they “ate.” The students used this visual model to describe what fraction of the pizza they ate. Students wrote out how they determined their answer and used the acronym “D.A.W.N.” D.A.W.N stands for Definition, Answer, Why, and Number Sentence. When writing their answer, the students must include a definition of what mathematical skill they are using (fractions), the answer to the problem, why or how they found their answer, and a number sentence showing the mathematical proof. Most of the students did well during this activity, I think that because the students had a visual model (pizza) they were better able to understand the concept of fractions. Because they knew you took pieces away from a pizza when you ate them, they were able to say they ate 2 of the 8 pieces, or 2/8. It seems that the more students are able to use manipulatives the better they understand the mathematical topic.
The students practiced their creative writing by answering the question from the prompt “30 years from now I will be famous because.” The students enjoyed this activity because they were able to write about being whatever they wanted to be. The students took about 15 minutes to write their story. I was able to work with two of the students who have a more difficult time constructing sentences. I helped the students organize their thoughts and clearly express them in a way that made sense. One of the two students did not need my help much, she only needed help with some of her spelling. Her sentence structure was very good, the only main difficulty she had was starting out her writing. The other student need a great amount of help and was barely able to clearly speak her thoughts clearly let alone write them out. It was difficult helping her write out the prompt because I wanted some of it to be in her own words. She was ready to let me tell her exactly what to write and at first if I did not tell her what to say, she did not know what to do. She improved her independence as the time went on, but it was very difficult to make sense of what she was trying to convey.
For their Social Studies lesson, the students researched facts about Maryland. The facts they were looking for was the state flower, insect, dog, crustacean, etc. The students used a worksheet to guide their research and then worked as a whole class to fill out the worksheet in its entirety. The main problem that occurred was that some of the books handed out did not have all of the facts that were needed to finish the worksheet. This problem was resolve when the class went over the answers to the worksheet together.