A Good Review

HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY, MAMA!
I am so happy tomorrow is Friday. This week has gone slower than usual and I have been working my butt off planning. I got observed today - by Helen and by John. I did a division lesson with cup people. Cup people were just faces of people I cut out and colored and then put on a cup. They were used as manipulatives to explain my reasoning. I also had little foods cut out and they were used to feed my cup people. I created the most random stories for my students to keep them interested. Here's one of the stories: Spiderman, Batman, and a clown all decided to go and see a movie one day. When they got seated in the theater, Spiderman and Batman sent the clown out to buy all of them popcorn. Clown bought seven bags of popcorn. When he got back, how many bags of popcorn did each person get? The students absolutely LOVED this story and had some very interesting answers. I had one student come up and distribute a bag of popcorn evenly to each cup person. We then counted how many were in each cup and realized there was one left over. As we were discussing the story and how many bags of popcorn each person got, I was writing on the board our information we knew. I also began writing the division problem in number format. Once the students realized we had one bag left over, I asked them what we needed to do with it. Some of their answers were precious. One kid said to take it back. Another kid said to give it to the person behind them. Another kid said steal two bags of popcorn from the people behind them so they would each have three bags. I got answers about splitting the bag equally between the three of them. After I let them figure out ways to make it equal, I finally explained that this was a remainder of one. They struggled with understanding why that one had to be leftover. We decided as a class that the best solution would be to split the bag three ways. After the students grasped the concept of division, I had them grouped in different areas of the classroom. At these areas there were cup people that the students made of themselves and a scenario with food cut outs. They were given about 5 minutes at each rotation to solve the problem. Overall, I think they really got a lot out of this lesson and you could tell that it was beginning to click with some of them. Sometimes these kids need to actually work the problem out before they can move to paper. On a great note, both Helen and John thought it was amazing! I was so relieved to get a good review. Only 6 of my 10 days teaching left!