Before we start the lesson, I point out that today I subbed in a high school special ed class. This was one of those self-contained special ed classes, with about twenty students and several aides. I've subbed in such classes for other districts -- I simply get called to cover special ed from time to time.
I'll continue to make a "Day in the Life" post for today -- Day 96 in my new district. This one will be interesting, since it's so completely different from a typical day. As usual, it's improper to mention particular students or their exact disabilities on the blog, and so I won't.
7:30 -- The students arrive midway through first period. Let me explain a little more about the bell schedule at this high school. No, this isn't a rotating schedule like at the middle schools. But at this school, "first period" is equivalent to what many schools would call "zero period" -- it's an early optional class period. Some students attend periods 1-6, while most attend periods 2-7.
Our special ed class takes the middle path -- the students arrive about halfway through first period and leave about halfway through seventh period. They begin each day with "morning work" -- a short writing assignment.
8:00 -- Second period P.E. class begins. These students have what is called "unified P.E." -- that is, they attend P.E. with "regular" (that is, general education) students.
These gen ed kids have actually volunteered to work with our special ed students. The P.E. teacher has the students perform push-ups and other various activities. First, the "partners" (gen ed students) demonstrate how to do each exercise, and then the "athletes" (special ed students) follow them. The partners are there to motivate their respective athletes to succeed in performing each stretch.
It is my policy, wherever I sub in a self-contained special ed class, to perform the stretches along with the students. Thus the students have me as an additional inspiration to do the exercises. Some of these exercises (such as the "crab walk") I haven't done in decades, while others (such as "Superman," where arms and legs are raised and only the belly is touching the ground) I've never done until today.
One girl struggles to do many of the stretches, but when she's ultimately successful, her partner cheers for her, and I give the athlete a high-five.
9:00 -- It is now third period. At this time, students are involved in different activities. Some of them go to video production to create a short video. Others work in local retailers across the street, where they help keep the items on the shelves organized and neat. One girl learns about the three local bus routes and how to plan for trips. The remaining students work on writing down the steps to a recipe to prepare for tomorrow, when they'll be cooking quesadillas. They learn many aspects to cooking, including the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon.
10:05 -- The students leave for nutrition.
10:30 -- It is now fourth period. Some students listen to one aide give a "mainstream" lesson on history -- I think it's on George Washington (ahead of President's Day). Other students meet with another aide who gives them some vocational advice.
Finally, there are groups working on math. The focus is on money -- one group of students simply counts various coins and bills, while the other solves word problems involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of money. Students are allowed to use calculators as well as a list of prices of common household items that people may want to buy.
Naturally, as a math teacher, I help the students out with this lesson. One student continues to look up the price of the wrong item or add instead of subtract. The second student is confused when he is given "coupons" for the items and asked to calculate a total price including the discount.
And the third boy struggles by a division problem. "If four boxes of paperclips cost $2.40, how much does one box of paperclips cost?" First, he calculates the answer as 1.3333... and asks me how to write such a "large" answer. I'm not sure how he obtains that incorrect answer -- notice that 4/2.40 is 1.6666... (so it's not a case of dividing in the wrong order). Then we work on the problem together and find out that the answer is 60 cents -- but for some reason he writes down 75 cents instead. (It appears to have something to do with the a box of paperclips listed as 89 cents on the price list -- in this problem, he isn't supposed to use the price list.)
11:30 -- This is normally fifth period, but today the aides switch fifth period with lunch. This is because of something called "Unified Sports" -- which is not the same as Unified P.E. class. Both Unified P.E. and Unified Sports are collaborations with gen ed volunteers. On Saturday, both sets of students are scheduled to play volleyball together. And so today, the gen ed kids are to practice the game with the special ed students -- the gen ed kids enter the gym during lunch, and the special ed students have the schedule rearranged so that they're in the gym after their lunch.
As our students eat in the classroom, they watch the Disney film Brother Bear.
12:20 -- Lunch ends, and the aides accompany the students to the gym. But unfortunately, the volleyball net isn't set up, and only one gen ed volunteer is available to work out with our athletes. So one of the aides texts the regular teacher, who replies to inform us that both today's practice and Saturday's game have been canceled. (Now she tells us!) Since our students are already in the gym, we have them practice "bumping" the volleyball with a partner.
1:10 -- It is now sixth period. It's math time for the groups who haven't had it yet. Other students go to the vocational lesson. Another group begins "recycling" -- after the gen ed lunch, they search the campus for plastic bottles and other recyclable items. The money they raise from recycling is used to purchase cooking items for tomorrow.
I'm assigned to work with a group of two boys. One of them is working on an addition and subtraction worksheet, similar to earlier, while the other is adding and subtracting numbers with two decimals without a calculator. The latter is learning about carrying for the first time -- and he struggles because he keeps trying to add from left to right.
2:10 -- It is now seventh period. The students are given free time. One group takes out a deck of Uno cards and starts to play. I ask the aides whether they're playing Uno correctly -- last week, I stumbled upon a clickbait site which informs us that most players don't use the "Wild Draw 4" card right. Here is a link to the official Uno rules:
https://www.unorules.com/
- Wild Draw Four – This acts just like the wild card except that the next player also has to draw four cards as well as forfeit his/her turn. With this card, you must have no other alternative cards to play that matches the color of the card previously played. If you play this card illegally, you may be challenged by the other player to show your hand. If guilty, you need to draw 4 cards. If not, the challenger needs to draw 6 cards instead.
The aides tell me that, like most Uno players, our students don't follow this rule properly either.
2:30 -- The students are dismissed, and the aides walk them to the school bus. Most schools, due to budget cuts, no longer have buses for gen ed students. But all California schools are required by law to offer buses for special ed students.
Let's get back to the New Year's Resolutions. Actually, today's a terrible day to look at the first resolution, on improving my classroom management. On days like today, the special ed aides take over running the class. In some cases, when I think I see students misbehaving, I simply tell one of the aides what I'm seeing -- especially if I'm not sure whether a rule is being broken. (For example, during Uno time one girl tried to enter the game, but the others tell her to wait until the current hand is completed. So she starts crying in the restroom. The aides inform me that players who want to join a game in progress should be dealt into the game, so the others were indeed wrong to exclude her.)
On the other hand, today's the perfect day to look at the second New Year's Resolution:
2. Keep a calm voice instead of yelling at students.
It would have been too easy for me to yell at the student who writes 75 cents as the answer, even though we just found the correct answer to be 60 cents. Fortunately, I don't yell. Instead, I tell him to wait for the aide to check the answer key. (She's busy helping another student and the period ends before she ever checks his answer.) And at the end of the day, the boy tells me that he enjoyed how much I helped him with his math assignment today. He definitely would not have said this if I'd spent the period yelling at him over 75 cents!
Even though I'm happy that I was able to fulfill the second resolution, it makes me a little sad that I wasn't able to help the special scholar last year as much as this student today.
Technically, we worked with Learning Centers all day today. The controversy, of course, is whether I should have used Learning Centers in my gen ed class last year.
Believe it or not, I've never covered Lesson 10-4 on the blog before. Both two and three years ago, I skipped Lesson 10-4 since it's one of those filler lessons, nestled in between the heavier Lesson 10-3 (on volumes of boxes) and 10-5 (volumes of other prisms and cylinders).
In many ways Lesson 10-4 is more algebraic than geometric. Indeed, this lesson introduces geometric models to justify the FOIL method of multiplying polynomials.
On her 2018 Mathematical Calendar, Pappas writes a problem fortuitously related to today's lesson:
How many cuts are needed to divide a cube into 27 congruent cubes?
Notice that two cuts are needed to divide a length into thirds. Since 27 = 3^3, we need to divide each of the length, width, and height into thirds. That's two cuts for each of three dimensions. Therefore the total number of cuts needed is six -- and today's date is the sixth.
In today's Lesson 10-4, we ask questions such as, how is the volume of a box affected by tripling its length, width, and height? The answer is that it increases by a factor of 27. Indeed, the same six cuts from Pappas can divide the cube into 27 boxes each congruent to the original box.
One of the review questions asks for the volume of an Uno card. (I wonder whether there are any Wild Draw 4 cards in this deck!) The bonus question asks students to cube a binomial.
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