4/5/07

State testing happens this week, so there isn't much of anything going on in my classroom. As the teacher, I find it both calming and nerve-racking to sit there and watch students take this test. It's calming because, to a certain extent, I feel confident about my students' ability to do math and succeed on tests. It also makes me feel good that one test is given in the morning and one test is given in the afternoon — that allows students to focus more on each test. Students also get a chance to relax for a while between the two tests.

But in some ways I find state testing to be just as nerve-racking for me as it is for my students. Once the tests have been passed out, there is nothing more that I can do. Hopefully all of the information we covered has sunk in and students will be able to recall it for the test. The pressure is on this year, since EVERY SINGLE ONE of our students passed the math ISAT test last year. I just hope we prepared our students well enough so that they can achieve at that same level again this year.

In addition to the ISATs, I am preparing for the continuation of Moving Straight Ahead in my classes. Yvette and I have decided to group students according to their performance in Investigation 1 and Investigation 3. For this rotation, I'll be teaching only one math class, and Yvette will be teaching two classes. I'll have the students who have been struggling with this book — the ones who could benefit from a smaller classroom and some extra attention. There will be 11 students in my class. I know that you're sitting there reading this and saying, "Only 11 students! I wish I could have only 11. That is so small!" But keep in mind that our team only has 46 kids on it. So, having a small class means having a really small class.

My goal for this week is to create a plan of attack for the students in my classroom. These students have been struggling with this book, so they'll need more time to review the concepts they've already been taught. I'm going to go through the book and find the essential investigations - the ones that all of my students must complete and understand. I need to double-check the new book to see what these investigations are, since they may be different from the list of essential investigations we had for the old version of Moving Straight Ahead. Once I've done this, I'll meet with our math coordinator to double-check myself and to find out what modifications I should make and how I can ensure that these students really understand the material.

I'm planning to create a poster with a step-by-step explanation of how to solve an equation. When some of my students were struggling with Investigation 3, I used little and big cubes to represent the different parts of the equations. This really helped some of them understand how to solve for each problem.

For example, for 3x+7 = 19, I had them do this:

3 large blocks and 7 small blocks = 19 small blocks

Then I asked, "What do we have to do to get all of the same types of blocks on the same side?" (Take 7 blocks from each side.)

"Now, how do we find out how many of the small blocks fit into each big block?"

This process worked really well for some of my students. I might try this as an introduction to reviewing equations.

We'll see how it goes!