Today I subbed in a middle school Interventions class -- a class for students who are failing subjects or need some extra guided study time. It's in my first Orange County district.
Hmm, I'm wondering whether I should do "A Day in the Life" today. It is middle school, but so much of it is just independent study, so I really don't do much teaching. But I do help some students with math -- and as for singing, my song for the day is "Meet Me in Pomona." In each class, I sing an additional tune based on what sort of math I see the students working on.
So I guess I'll do "A Day in the Life" after all:
8:30 -- First period arrives.
Each class today begins with an Attendance Warm-Up, where students log in to Google Classroom and complete a form declaring what subject they'll be working on today. And each ends with a corresponding Exit Pass where they state what they accomplished. These are the only two assignments that count for a grade in Interventions class itself -- all other work, of course, is for the academic class in which they're trying to improve.
Most of the students in this class are seventh graders. I see one guy solving two-step equations, and so my math song for this period is "Solve It."
Meanwhile, the regular teacher enforces a Zoom camera rule -- this marks the first time that I've seen any teacher in this district enforce camera. Unfortunately, none of the three students in this class turns on a camera, and so I must indicate this on a note for her with a "C" for the camera rule.
9:35 -- First period leaves and second period arrives.
This class is all eighth graders, and so I see a student working on, not two-step equations, but the volume of a cone. And so I perform "All About That Base and Height," even though the lyrics mention only prisms and cylinders, not cones. Then again, the students will likely see prisms, cylinders, and cones all on their next test.
This is the smallest class of all, with only four students, all guys. Three of these are in-person, and the lone opted-out student is absent. Thus the camera rule doesn't come up at all.
10:40 -- Second period leaves for snack break.
10:55 -- Third period arrives.
This class is more like first period -- a larger class with more seventh graders. This time, I see someone working on integer operations, and so my extra song is "Same Sign Add and Keep." Why one Math 7 class is solving equations and another doing integer ops, I don't know.
And this class has online students who have opted out. This time, I emphasize to the students that I'll tell their regular teacher that they refused to turn on their cameras. This is enough for them to comply.
11:55 -- Third period leaves for lunch.
12:15 -- Ordinarily, after lunch is academic support, which students attend online only (whether they've opted in or out of hybrid). At this school, this corresponds to the periods that don't meet today (in this case fourth through sixth periods). Often the students make an appointment with the teacher.
But that's not how this Interventions class works. Here, there are students assigned to attend this class in-person. each day.
For one thing, notice that there are only fifteen minutes between the end of third period and the start of the afternoon session (plus five minutes of "passing," which means that I must go out to the quad and gather them). It's in times like these when I don't like how schools no longer serve teacher lunch. (I explained this in one of my spring break posts -- in order to remain cashless, cafeterias provide lunch to all students free of charge, but teachers and other adults can't get lunch at all, not even if I hand them enough money to pay.) This teacher has a conference period on certain days, but today's the day that she doesn't have one. So 15 minutes is her longest break of the day -- which isn't even enough time for me to get lunch off-campus. I don't know what she eats on days like these, but I have nothing to eat.
This is the longest block of the day, and so she provides a five-minute break. I treat this like a music break and sing "Meet Me in Pomona." At the end of the block, I sing "Angle Dance," only because I see an angle problem already written on the board (even though I don't see any of these kids working on angles at all).
There is no Zoom, so the camera rule doesn't apply. One girl regularly does art in this class, and so I let her draw on construction paper. We can't find the color pencils in the room, and so I let her have two of my markers.
2:00 -- The afternoon session ends, thus ending my day. I finally grab a bite to ear.
Today is Sixday on the Eleven Calendar:
Resolution #6: We ask, what would our heroes do?
That's easy today -- our heroes work on their math problems and avoid falling behind, so that they don't need to attend Interventions class (and have a elective that's more fun instead).
This is what I wrote two years ago about today's lesson:
Question 7 of the SBAC Practice Exam is on inequalities:
Which inequality represents all possible solutions of -6n < -12?
A) n < 72
B) n > 2
C) n < 2
D) n > 72
At last, we have a true first semester Algebra I problem. The answers are set up to test student knowledge of two important ideas. First to solve -6n < -12, instead of multiplying by -6, we should divide by -6. This eliminates choices A) and D). The other is that whenever we divide both sides of an inequality, we must flip the direction of the inequality. Thus the answer is B).
Both the girl and the guy from the Pre-Calc class correctly answer B) for this question.
Question 8 of the SBAC Practice Exam is on trig ratios:
Consider this right triangle.
[In Triangle ABC, C is a right angle, BC = 20, AC = 21, AB = 29.]
Enter the ratio equivalent to sin B.
This Geometry question is also straightforward. The sine ratio is opposite divided by hypotenuse. The side opposite B is AC = 21, while the hypotenuse is 29. Therefore sin B = 21/29.
The girl from the Pre-Calc class correctly answers 21/29 for this question. But the guy gives the answer sin(21/29) instead. He clearly forgets that once he finds 21/29 he's already found the sine, so he doesn't need to take the sine again. I wonder whether he would have made this mistake on the computer and typed in the letters "sin."
In past years, this was an activity day. This year I'll keep the old worksheets since I like the questions I asked on them, but the Desmos activity day won't be until Friday.
For both questions, I take the Exploration Questions found in the corresponding lessons of the U of Chicago text (either Algebra I or Geometry, as listed below in the Commentary.) It's coincidental that both of them involve squaring numbers on a calculator.
SBAC Practice Exam Question 7
Common Core Standard:
Solve linear equations and inequalities in one variable, including equations with coefficients represented by letters.
SBAC Practice Exam Question 8
Common Core Standard:
Understand that by similarity, side ratios in right triangles are properties of the angles in the triangle, leading to definitions of trigonometric ratios for acute angles.
Commentary: Solving simple inequalities such as this one is covered in Lesson 4-6 of the U of Chicago Algebra I text. And the sine ratio, meanwhile, is defined in Lesson 14-4 of the U of Chicago Geometry text. Students should just be careful not to write sin() after already finding the sine.
No comments:
Post a Comment