Tuesday, April 14th

Today was a little more difficult than yesterday. The students seemed to have a bit more energy and seemed to be a bit more talkative. Nevertheless, here's how the day's lesson went:

1. Sponge. 1 problem over what we were doing in the Biggest Gainer and one over what we are currently covering in our CMP 2 books (that is, surface area).
2. Review for Biggest Gainer. We spent about 30 minutes solving problems that were similar to those on the Biggest Gainer post-test. I gave a few notes to the class. Then, we went over, as a class, a few problems that pertained to the notes. Finally, I asked the class to solve (individually) problems over fractions, decimals, and percents.
3. CMP 2 work. We spent the last part of our class working out problems that were from Problem 1.3 in our Filling and Wrapping books.

Today was a bit of a strenuous day for me. The students were more talkative than usual. Once again, I had no "bad" behaviors except excessive talking. This was extremely frustrating, because we did not get as far as we needed to go, according to my lesson plans. Thus, tomorrow we will have to finish up Problem 1.3 and hopefully get started on Chapter 2.

Oh, I also joined two groups today--one about Middle School Math Teachers and another that was a think-tank group for making math more interesting to students. I started a converstaion in the Middle School Math Teachers group. It was a question asking other members if any of them used any CMP 2 resources in their skills. I hope to get a reply, because I could use some new ideas for this unit!