Well That Sucked . . .

If yesterday's lesson went well, today's was horrible! Ah... I just laugh. How many times in my career, going on 16+ years now where I've had one good lesson, followed by a horrid one. And yet another example today.

Ooohhhh.... tenths and hundredths and thousandths. Tough stuff to understand. Tougher to teach, I think. So I had my lesson all mapped out, had the objectives, had students talking to each other, was ready to summarize the end of the lesson...yeah, good intentions!

The students' breadth of knowledge ended as soon as I started today it seemed like. Massive confusion about hundredths and thousandths probably because . . . no take that back. Because I, yes I, could not deliver it the way Investigations was leading me to. Suddenly, in the mess of what became my lesson, I immediately jumped back to standard algorithm. AHHH!! I even found myself saying things like, "You move the decimal over two places when converting to percent." Sure, the students did it, but holy cow, they had no conceptual knowledge as to WHY I was asking them to do it. There was mass confusion, anger, frustration (mainly from me because I just couldn't articulate).

I totally forgot the video camera today (HEHEHE) and yesterday, but I'm going to try and have it set up at least once this week to record the horror!

I was reminded the variance of ability as well. Some kids tore out of the gate and actually followed what I was trying to get across. Amazing really. These are kids that will succeed despite me. How sad is that? Then there are the others that, God bless 'em, were lost . . . total deer in the headlight look.

So, I'm back to the drawing board tonight. Looking at my lesson for tomorrow. I wonder if they're going to come in to do a walk through? AHHH! And the fact I won't  get feedback if they do...oh, man.

And to think next month, I do this thing again at first grade. I gonna be living in Quigley's room that week, baby!

As I reflect, I will say that I've planned using a Brain Rules Framework that I created based on Chapter 4: Attention. I think I've had decent engagement. At least, it looks that way and I've tried to watch my time intervals and provide ECS (emotional hooks). Whew. Go John Medina!

Cheers to all of you for your efforts. I'm trying, really I am.