A day in the life of Math 8 Students!

I love the challenge of teaching and lesson planning; figuring out who my students are, what they already understand, what they still need to discover and how to get them there. In Math 8, we recently finished Unit 4 on Measurement. Students solved word problems that involved liters, km, meters, grams and other units of measurement in the . In our last lesson, we were going through a couple of problems together as a class. One of my students was struggling to understand and needed a slower pace. Memories from past school experiences were being remembered and causing anxiety. This student was ridiculed and mistreated in moments of not understanding which of course would shut down a student's thinking.

In my classroom environment, I have shared with students that mistakes are welcome! They help us learn and grow! After going through the problem again and having another student step up to help explain in his words, I had a conversation with this student. We were heading into some time for students to work on problems in groups so I gave this student some choices of who to work with. The student chose a classmate who already stepped in to help a few moments ago. They moved into another corner of the room to work. I was amazed as they were able to work through two problems in 15 minutes. The helper kept checking his peer's understanding before moving on. It was beautiful!

While they were working, two other students were working together and having a very active discussion as they were solving the last problem. The problem had a graph which showed someone's journey in three parts; the first part of the journey, resting, and the last part of the journey. Students were to find how long the entire journey took and the distance for the first part and second part. These two students were checking each other's thinking as they shared what they were seeing in the graph and what they needed to do with the information. Both of these students are not always actively engaged so I was really excited to see them working! For their exit ticket, I had them re-write the problem they were working on and they saw a mistake and fixed it!

The last two students were working more independently through the problems. I chose each of them to write one of the problems on the board. I do this often and we will critique each other's thinking by posing questions or comments. I have also had students share different methods as they approach the same problem in different ways. The first student wrote her steps on the board then as she was writing her solution, started writing it in German! Love it! She caught herself and started to erase her writing and I encouraged her to write it in German! She had to think about her German grammar as she wrote out her answer again! I love that she used both language and math in the same class! The other independently working student asked to write his answer in French as he spent some time in French schools. Of course!! Please do! I took pictures of their writing on the board so you can see the German and French! It was a great class with a lot of learning going on! I apologize that the pictures are not great.