Second Lesson- March 26, 2008

Today went so much better!!! Lauren and I went home after yesterday's lesson and completely changed around everything we wanted to do. We decided that if we wanted them to understand the strategy, we would have to reintroduce the Hundreds Chart and make them familiar with the patterns and arrangement. We had noticed yesterday that some of the students didn't notice that the numbers were in order because when we asked them to find a certain number they were wondering around aimlessly until the number caught their eye. Additionally, we had noticed that when we were trying to get them to skip down by 10, they could comprehend that you go down but we didn't feel confident that they understood WHY so that was another thing that we considered while planning the lesson. We began this lesson by first reviewing place value since that was definitely a weakness that we had encountered. After doing this, we began to show them with manipulatives that when you go down a column on the Hundreds Chart, you don't change the ones place, only the tens place changes which allowed them to make the connection that when you move down, you are adding ten. Additionally, we showed them that when you go across a row, the tens place stays the same and the one places is the one that changes. This made them realize that when you want to add by one, you move to the right. Within this process, they were able to understand that the upper left portion of the chart had the lowest number and the lower right corner had the highest number and all the numbers in between were in numerical order. We then introduced a Hundreds Chart that only had the first row (1-10) and the last column (10-100) written and we were asking them how we might be able to find a certain number. Here we were really able to analyze and evaluate whether or not they had a good understanding of the Hundreds Chart. They understood that in the first row, whatever was in the ones place had to be the same throughout their column so that was good! The only thing they had trouble with was that at the end of the row, if the row ended in 70, they thought that everything before that would be 70 too when in reality, all the 70s are actually on the next row. I learned a lot from this experience and most of it was carried over from our previous one. I learned that modifying a lesson can be extremely beneficial and if you realize that your students aren't at a certain level that you expected them to be at, then it can be EXTREMELY beneficial to them to back track a little bit. Although I was extremely frustrated yesterday, I think it was a great learning experience on many levels.