Grade 9 Academic - Day 11

Today's recall was more work with fractions so I thought it would be fun to do a warm up from Fraction Talks. I asked them to show multiple ways of finding the answer.

I was pleased that they seemed comfortable working with these fractions and showed flexibility when looking at how to regroup the shaded parts.

We worked on multiplying and dividing fractions next. Though I tried to channel my inner Fawn Nguyen, I sucked. Oh my, it did not go well. I did a lousy job when answering questions. My explanations were not good. I need to work on all of this... But this is what we did:

I know that I have the luxury of being able to just move on. My students already have tools for working with fractions,. Many of those tools are memorized, not understood, and I was trying to work on that. Sigh...

We also did a few more examples with distributive property and exponent laws. They groaned when they saw the second one, but did a good job nonetheless.

Despite knowing that it wasn't a good idea to give the quiz I had planned with only 15 minutes remaining, I did (why do I not listen to myself sometimes???). Many students continued the quiz into lunch which I appreciated. I think I will start tomorrow with the last question from the quiz, in random groups at the big whiteboards. Here it is: 

"Martha simplified an exponent rule question and ended up with the answer -2x²y. What could the question have been? Determine 3 possible questions with this answer that demonstrate each of the exponent rules."


I am hoping to see a lot of creative answers that push their collective skills forward. And I will work on my lack of skills teaching fraction multiplication & division...