Fractions Introductory Lessons
April 4-5, 2022
After completing place value, the next unit up for the grade 1’s was fractions. This was going to be their first real introduction to fractions and fraction language. It was important for me that the grade 1s fully understood the fractions before moving on. I decided that I would introduce wholes, halves, and unequal fractions on one day, do a review of those and add in fourths the next day.
To start the lesson, I had the students pretend to make a pizza, and then put a pizza on the projector. I asked if the class wanted to add pepperoni. Half the class did, and half of them did not. I asked what we should do to solve the problem. At first, they wanted to buy more pizza, but then one student suggested that we do half pepperoni and half cheese. This is how I introduced the idea of halves. We then went into the properties of halves, how to identify halves, examples of halves in our real world, and then briefly touched on unequal fractions. We ended the activity with a worksheet where students had to fold, cut, and paste a shape on their page as halves, and write about their fraction (who they would share it with).
Reflecting on this lesson, it went very well and I am glad I introduced halves and fourths at separate times. Looking forward to the next couple of days after, the students got very confused with fourths and needed extra time to work through it. Even getting into fair sharing, the students were very solid on halves but confused on fourths. If I did this introductory lesson again, I think I would add even more hands-on activities, besides the consolidation activity. I could use snap cubes to model cutting something in equal halves, or even use playdough and have students physically do the cutting and making equal parts. This lesson could be adapted in different ways because I believe that all students at this age should be slowly introduced to new concepts and ideas instead of being taught all at once. I also believe that hands-on activities are extremely important. Overall, I am very pleased with this lesson, and it set the tone for the rest of the math lessons to come.
Weekly Day Book
April 11-14, 2022
Before the last week of my second placement, my AT informed me that she wanted me to teach 100%. This was exciting but very daunting. I had been keeping short and not detailed day plans in my notes because my AT preferred just lesson plans being sent to her. I knew that for the last week, I was going to have to create a day plan to make her aware of everything I was planning. She gave me a rough outline of the things she wanted me to touch on. This included starting a new expectation when completing the shared reading, starting media literacy (inferencing), teaching digraphs, and religion, and continuing to teach social studies, math, gym, and art.
My daybook was organized by block, and then further cut down by the minutes to fully describe the events that would take place. After my lessons, I would write a short reflection on the lesson, and maybe what I will continue tomorrow. It was nice to look back at my notes from the day before and remember what I had done more carefully.
Prior to this, I had no experience with daybooks in teaching. I loved having something to turn to to make sure I was on the right page with everything, adding small notes that I remembered during a lesson, or making sure I bring up to the students what I had planned before (e.g., questions in a book for shared reading). My daybook made me feel more comfortable while teaching. I looked it over during the day, I could look at it between transitional periods, and it was comforting to have the entire day planned to the minute, even if the times changed over the day. It makes teaching a lot easier when you are not worried about if you are on time, on task, etc.
In the future, I would add more room for me to add notes and ideas to it. By the end of the week, it got a bit messy, and difficult to read. Adding a notes section would give me more space to write about ideas, thoughts, topics, and anything I needed to talk about.