J-Term Day 5

January 13, 2020

Day 5



Today I started the morning working with kids on how to multiply and divide fractions with unlike denominators. It was such an enjoyable day right from the start as the kids actually got it super quickly!! Once I realized that they knew what they were doing I taught some of them how to cross-reduce and they really enjoyed it and got quite good at it. For probably the first time, I was glad for Ms. Hampton’s (My math teacher at my old school) little song that she gave us to remember how to divide fractions. “Dividing Fractions is easy as pie, just flip the second and multiply” When I was in middle school, she would not stop drilling that song into our heads over and over and over again. So… I taught it  to them, it was helpful but I made sure not to be repetitive with it as she was because then it simply gets too annoying and you begin to dislike it. The kids that I taught today were a combination of students that got it right away and students that I had to work with for a while after the others in the group left, which was weird. It seemed odd to me that there was no in-between (No students that partially understood it from the beginning) however I do believe that no matter how the students entered the lesson they left it knowing more than they had previously. I also taught another group how to add and subtract fractions with like denominators which was surprisingly easy. All of them got it immediately and we were able to go more into a lesson on reducing the fractions that they had gotten as answers from the addition. Today I was again unable to stay after lunch because “Art of Cooking” wasn’t staying as long as I had thought they would. I think that this will have to become the norm, with me not staying after lunch, which is unfortunate. I felt like today fulfilled Learning Outcome 5 ("Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively") because I believe that today went so well because I have developed my communication skills with the students immensely since the beginning of all of this and I have been able to turn lessons from me telling them things to us working together to find the answer and "discovering" it together. Learning how to do that was a huge help. I believe that this falls under the category of Service because I have been helping with my community with their need, assisting the teacher and the students by teaching them math.

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