Abby Markert
Math
09/27/12
Student Work Blog
On Wednesday, September 26, 2012,
during our math period we were learning about the calendar and the different
ways to write the date. This lesson was completed with the students sitting on
the carpet and my MT at the front of the room explaining and modeling the
lesson. As a result I was not able to get a formal piece of work from the
students but I did take an anecdotal record of some of the questions, comments,
and understandings of the student. My MT introduced the months of the year
(written on the board with the corresponding number) and the days of the week
(also written on the board with the corresponding number) and began by asking
the students to say the months and observe the order. My MT also modeled a few
times how we can write the date in the long format (i.e. August 15th,
2012) and the short format (08-15-12). While modeling she pointed to the
numbers explaining and showing how she formed the dates. After she had done a
few of these she asked some students to volunteer their birthday and helped
them write the date in the two forms. Then she asked students to explain what
the numbers in the short form stood for. One student volunteered her birthday;
January 3rd, 2012. As a class my MT began to write her birthday in
the short form: 1-3-12. After both dates were written on the board my MT chose
a student and asked “Tom*, why do you think we wrote the number 1 here
(pointing to the date)?” Tom took a moment to think clearly looking at both the
long and short versions of the date and said “because that the day she was
born!” Tom knew and recognized that the numbers in the date are the day of the
month not the month itself. My MT began to explain by showing that the 1
actually was January because January is the first month of the year. The lesson
moved on with a few more examples and similar errors were made. Another example
that was stated with another birthday (7-20-12) was said by a little girl “the
7 is because she was born on Sunday!” This error came from the days of the week
also listed on the board with a corresponding number. This became an issue as well because the
students were confused with the numbers of the months and also the numbers of
the week seeing that they are different. These mistakes reveal that the
students may not understand how many months are in a year or that the calendar
starts over after the 12 month. They also may not understand that the days of
the week are not part of the numerical short version of the date. As a way to
scaffold this for the students it may have been beneficial to use colors to
help identify the differences in the numbers. To further push the thinking of
the students and create a higher-level task it would be useful to ask the
students for their explanation. It could start as an all group setting
explaining how would you arrange the date of the calendar? Or how would you
create the system for dates and set up the calendar? This would get the
students to think for themselves and come up with their own conclusion of a
system that would most likely come back to being the simple one that is already
in place. This would allow the students to internalize and rationalize their
thinking and therefore make the information more concrete to them. Students
could also answer these questions in group or individual work coming up with
their own system that they may present to the class. Having the students
explain their thinking will bring this task to a higher-level and also solidfy
their understandings.
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