Week 6 Reflection

This week you have we read chapter 13 in the textbook which focused on ratio, rate, and percent, but in class we mainly talked about proportional reasoning. We only had one peer present this information to us this week, but it was still quite interesting to learn about. We talked about part-to-part ratios and part-whole ratios in class. This can be a bit of a confusing topic for some students, but with good examples it is can become clearer. We also looked at equivalent rations, which is when two ratios represent the same relationship. For example 3:4 = 6:8. It is much like equivalent fractions, you just have to multiply both numbers by the same number. We went over ratios and rates, and we looked at some good strategies that will help students visualize rate and ratio problems. The handout that we got had this information: 

Woolley, E. © 2015 

Woolley, E. © 2015

Some of the manipulatives that can be used to solve these problems include:

• counters/grids 
• ratio tables/charts - double number lines 
• graphs 
• multiplication tables - easy to visual equivalent ratios - double it, triple it, etc. and you have your equivalent ratios 

We looked at  a video that showed students problem solving the Chocolate question 

• absolute cost is the same
• goal - get the student differentiate absolute cost and relative proportional cost 
• i.e. cost per unit 
• 1 chocolate bar 1200g for $10 
• 1 chocolate bar 1.3kg for $10 
• first convert to same unit - 1200g and 1300g 
• both $10 (absolute cost is the same) but one chocolate you get 100g more chocolate for the same price 

The students problem solved the problem and shared their thoughts with the class. 

It went over what informal proportional reasoning is; one student explained the answer, some students didn't understand so she rephrased her answer to make sure everyone understood the problem and the answer and the reason for her thinking. She provided evidence for her thinking and explained her logic. This video was a good example of how to teaching math to younger students and how to get them engaged.  

For the last part of class we talked about the 3-part lesson plan, which is used in most math lessons. We filled in lesson plan template with the model from the video. This way we will be able to understand how to follow the template when we have to write our own lesson plans. Within the 3-part lesson plan there are 7 steps that we have to go through to plan for a math lesson:

1. Do the math
2. Questions to ask
3. Problems to pose
4. Instructional strategies 
5. Resources/materials
6. Assessment 
7. Adaptations/modifications/extensions 

We also went over a few examples of success criteria for Sharing Your Work in a math class:

• I can represent my work with a diagram or picture or chart
• I can select a strategy and use operations to show my work
• I can explain the actual steps I took to solve my problem 

Overall, this class was very helpful and informative for writing our own lesson plans in math. I will definitely be using this information to help me teach math and plan a lesson plan.