Monday Monday full of sunshine!

In Amy's class, the students continued exploring the graphs of different trig functions on geometry sketchpad. She had them graph each function along with its reciprocal to try to explain the reason for the different look in each function. I have never explored why the functions' graphs look a certain way, so its a wonderful opportunity to take notes about the lesson to be able to possibly teach it in the future. In period 2, I observed Mrs. Strong teach 6th grade math. I have observed her class before, but both times were when science was going on. She is getting her masters and attempting some really cool research on how the students explain and learn things on their own. This class today reminded me of Joyce's class at KIPP because the students were doing all the talking to reach the major concept of percents. The students decided that percents translated to "out of 100" as they brainstormed where they had seen percents in real life and then discussed what the word meant. Mrs. Strong led them to connect ratios and percents by realizing a percent is simply the number over 100. On a classroom management note, Mrs. Strong is so full of energy and it seems to get the kids hyped up almost to the point of no return. They begin shouting out unrealistic answers and acting obnoxiously. I think she reinforces their behavior too much by being so up beat and nice. After advisory and lunch, I helped the 8th graders with their battery projects. Some students are building candy machines, baby mobiles, cookie wrappers, carousels, Ferris wheels, cupcake sprinklers, and a jewelry boxes. One of the girls who is making the carousel explained to me that she has been in an engineering group outside of school since the 4th grade. She impressed me by explaining how the gears on their motor work to slow down and speed up their carousel. It is fun to walk around to check in with the students and see what aspect of their project they are working on for that day. In 4th period, I observed Ms. K's class as they learned the third test taking strategy of estimation. They went through a couple of examples as Ms. K led their thinking. They also received their homework problem for the week and then had time to complete any unfinished work. As I worked around, I saw a girl struggling on her Study Island test which involved exponents. I asked her if I could help her and then sat down to better explain the concept. We got out a scratch piece of paper and worked on a couple of questions. For 5th period, I headed back to Dan's class to work with the other class on their projects. In the last 15 minutes I was able to help another student one-on-one with his x & y intercepts homework. I love having the opportunity to observe the teacher teach the material and then attempt my own version of the same material. My favorite part of the day was working with those students one-on-one!