Grade 9 Academic - Day 14

The sun is shining, the power is on and we had lots of math to do today. We started with this warm up. The intent was to highlight the power of simplifying before multiplying fractions.

I had made an agenda for the day, mostly to keep myself on track, and still managed to go out of order right from the start (sigh). 

We jumped into the practice test. I am hoping that seeing the format of a test (3 page booklet) and the types of questions from this past test will help ease some of their anxiety on Friday (test day). I asked them to quietly work on it for 30 minutes. Some skipped questions that they didn't know how to do, while others zipped through it. I did not expect them to complete the test in this time, but wanted to break up the time to allow some conversation and learning to occur. At the end of the 30 minutes, they chose cards to organize themselves into random groups, and went to the big whiteboards to compare answers. There were some really good conversations going on and many misconceptions came to light. Some of the questions could have multiple correct answers so it was great to see them checking each other's work. During this time I circulated and made sure the mathematics was correct and answered questions. 

I saved the last 10 minutes of class to talk about vocabulary. I had made a handout for them which we took up.

I think we are making progress. They are willing to talk about their mistakes with classmates and ask questions when things are clear. With a couple more days of review work I hope things will go well on Friday.