28-10-14
Today worked well for the most part. My students were engaged in what they were learning and the discussions we held as a class demonstrated that students were advancing their understanding of fractions and decimals.
During the middle session today I facilitated a review on converting fractions into decimals, I asked students how confident they felt with their understanding of this content and organised into two groups. Students who were less confident worked directly with me as we discussed and explored together how fractions can be represented and how we can look at them as a decimal. Meanwhile students who were grasping the concept were given some extension work on fractions as decimals and this was supported by my mentor. Using various concrete manipulatives such as string, hundreds, tens and ones blocks as well as diagrams, we collaboratively discussed different scenarios and how we solve the problems. For example, we spoke about a very large cake at a big party of 100 people. The cake was cut into 100 equal pieces. If half (1/2) of those people ate one equal piece each, what would amount left-over be as a decimal. Inviting other students to explain their understanding and share it with others helped to maintain engagement and developed students’ communication skills.
Unfortunately there were still two or three students who still did not understand the concept properly and I will need to make time to provide more support for these students. I will conduct some more research into teaching this content area for different support strategies and ways of helping my student with potential short-term memory problems.