Third Week, FINISH

Ok, that one kind of flew by. Maybe that's because it was only a 4-day week.

Again, I'm getting more comfortable trying to explain mathematical concepts in ASL, asking questions, clarifying, etc. Not that I'm really very comfortable yet, but it's getting there.

I had the 8th grade class with just two boys again today (third boy's still sick). If I walked into a regular classroom with 30 kids right now, I might go into shock -- these small classes are starting to seem normal.

Next week I officially take over 9th grade Pre-Algebra (first part of New York Math A, really) and the 6th grade class. The 6th graders are either going to do a chapter on primes, divisibility, GCF and LCM, etc. or one on angles, nets, and other geometric topics. I get to choose which chapter, so I'm going to look over the book this weekend. The 9th graders are taking a test Tuesday, then doing a section on problems involving averages Thursday, and one on working with literal equations (formulas) on Friday.

My university supervisor is coming to observe me Thursday. So he'll see the averages lesson with the 9th grade, me helping whatever kids need help in the two "low-end" classes, and whatever I decide to do with the 8th grade. I think I'm going to do a short review of how to change terminating decimals into fractions, then extend to a lesson on turning repeating decimals to fractions, which they haven't learned yet. It's easy enough to teach -- just give them a list of fractions to turn into decimals, that all have denominators of 9, 99, or 999 (and so on), and they'll see the pattern. Then we can play a little Baseball with whatever time's left.

So, there's the main goal for Easter weekend: write really good lesson plans for Thursday. Since all the 8th grade's been doing so far is reviewing, my lesson plans have been kind of so-so, because there's just not much to say.

I also need to find a way to get those problems using trig ratios to really sink in for the 8th grade. Yesterday I reviewed at the beginning of class, warned them they needed to really understand to do the homework, and they claimed they were clear. Then the girl who's top of the class turned hers in today, and she only got half of the problems correct. This is a sign that my suspicions were correct, so we're spending the full class Monday working on that.