Week of January 14

Monday: All students completed the Unit 5 Test on Percents and worked on unfinished work in there Math Modeling Binders

Tuesday: We started a three day lesson about problem solving with proportional reasoning.
The students were encouraged to work independently to solve the problem. I wanted to teach them not only problem solving and proportional reasoning, but to "THINK" on their own through the mathematical steps. I wanted them to learn through mistakes made and their own realization of what the problem was asking them to find. The problem allowed the students to solve through many avenues and I was impressed with their thinking and the strategies they developed to solve. This day was designed for me to help as a minimum and in most cases, when asked a question I answered them with a question to promote their thinking.

Wednesday: Day 2 was a time for the students to rethink about how they solved based on the problem and the new questions I asked them. I listed these questions on the board for the students to think about:

How can you justify or explain your answers mathematically?

Do your calculations use the total distances traveled?

What information are you told in the problem about the TOTALS?

Can you set up the problem similar to a fraction or part/ total or whole?

Did you take into account the returned journey?

The comments in the dialogue boxes may help you and give suggestions.

Is it fair for Marla to pay the same amount as Lara? Why or why not?

Do you need to consider the journey to school and the return home

too?

What could you say about the amount Jason should pay compared to the amount Marla should pay?

Next the students were assigned a team to work with to discuss their solutions and look at other sample student answers and evaluate their work. This was great for the students to see how others solved and in many cases it was different than their solutions. They were then able to find errors in the samples and use those to draw conclusions on how to solve the problem.

Thursday: Day 3 and FINAL day! The teams will get back together and organize their teams' solutions and create a poster with the solution and explanation. the teams posters will be displayed in the classroom!

I am very proud of the studnets hard work and their cooperative work this week! They have come a long way and have learned to "THINK" with or without prompts!