The Quad Squad

I could definitely get used to sleeping in until 6:45. It took a little longer to get to school, but it was worth it. I arrived just in time for block 1 to begin. The first 40 minutes of 6th grade math was spent grading lifework and morning work and then taking grades. She went over a couple of problems from the lifework to answer students' questions. Today's lesson was about the five shapes in the quadrilateral family; parallelogram, rectangle, rhombus, square, and trapezoid. The students drew a picture of each shape in their journals and wrote a brief description. Then Joyce explained that a square has multiple names because it fits into the description of a parallelogram, rectangle, and a rhombus, but a trapezoid fits into none of those categories. The students drew a complex venn diagram to demonstrate which shapes were included in the others. Once the lifework was handed out, Joyce did a couple on the board to get them started. In the lifework they had to use the material they learned yesterday with supplementary, complementary, and vertical angles. Come to find out, 5th grade is learning the exact same thing as 6th grade. I don't really know why that is, but it was interesting to see how the material was taught by two different people to two different grade levels. I enjoyed the way Ms. Starr taught it because she connected it to a family. There were four sisters and one brother. The trapezoid was the brother because a trapezoid has only one set of parallel sides and the four sisters have two sets of parallel sides. After introducing the lesson on the board, Ms. Starr took notes as the students followed along with their own notes. After lunch, I taught 6th grade about the quad squad. I requested Joyce's presence for today's class. She has this magic that anytime she walks into the room it becomes silent and anytime she walks out it becomes loud. The students were pretty disengaged today and one actually fell asleep twice. I had to say his name to wake him up and I should have made him stand in the back to stay awake. I did have the students undivided attention and geniune interest for about 10 min. when I taught them the reason why our military defense building is a pentagon and called the Pentagon. They thought that was pretty cool. Other then that, they would listen and participate when they had too but I didn't see any real desire in their eyes. After I was finished teaching the lesson, I handed out the lifework and we did a couple on the board. I became concerned after I asked multiple students the angle sum of a triangle and no one could answer me. After class, Mrs. Boubel informed me that they know the information they were just acting up and being lazy. If I would have known that I would not have kept prodding and asking different students. Joyce thought I had done a nice job explaining questions in multiple different ways to help the students understand. I asked if she had any suggestions for their level of engagement and she just said, "We don't give them enough water and free time to stay focused for 10 hours in school." After 6th grade, I taught 5th grade and today I led the stretch, lifework, and aspirations. After I took grades, I did the little introduction to the quad squad before beginning the notes. I followed Ms. Starr's example about the four sisters and a brother. After taking notes, Ms. Starr let them do board races to review for the quiz tomorrow. During advisory today, Ms. Starr let her students have a dance after they cleaned her room. They don't have janitors at KIPP so it is part of the students' responsiblities to keep the school clean. During morning advisory, I guess her students were complaining that KIPP never lets them do anything fun. This is kind of true. If it won't help them get to college, it doesn't happen. The have 30 minutes of P.E. which sometimes turns into a little free time and they have a 20 recess after lunch. Thats it. They are silent for the first 20 min. of their 25 min. lunch and they are not even supposed to sit with their friends; they are supposed to sit in the next available seat. So Ms. Starr decided she would let them listen to music and dance at the end of the day. Oh course there were only like 4 students who actually danced, but it was the principle I guess. So we got to end the day with a little music and laughter.
~ These are pictures of Ms. Starr's classroom and me teaching the 5th grade.