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lady_songsmith... for a LIVE "Adventures in Subbing" entry!
Ok, so it's 9:40 pm and I've been home long enough to eat dinner, shower, and watch West Wing, but it's more live than the posts about what I did before Thanksgiving.
Don't think about that too hard.
Today's exciting adventure: Math! Spanning seven years of growth and learning, in four grades!
First up, a double period of Juniors, precalculus. Today's topic, graphing exponential functions. To begin with a review of properties of exponents.
Fortunately, the practice sheet came with a handy-dandy little box at the top, summarizing all of the relevant properties, because I don't remember what anything is called anymore... It's like, "What!? You do this, this, and that other thing. It had a name?" So, uh, I have two questions... Number 1. Why have you attempted to change 16(22x)=2x into base 4? Follow-up; why did you think 22x was in any way related to 4x2? Number 2. Why do you think 3x plus 1 is 4x?
Other than that, it went pretty smoothly.
Next we haveSophomoresFreshmen in Geometry. Today's lesson, the Hinge Theorem. Another one of those, "Wait, they named that?" things. Actually, this one went quite smoothly, although I did have to make a general announcement that none of the first six question was equal. (Fill ins; choose =, <, or >) Half the class did get hung up on a question that involved matching a conclusion to given information -- they kept selecting an answer which was true but wrong. For the geeks that inhabit my f-list -- if two triangles share a side, call it AB, and you are told that their other sides AC and AD are equal, and that angle CAB is bigger than angle DAB... the logical conclusion from the information given is: A) CB > DB, or B) Angle C = Angle D.
Ok, on to the good stuff. Sixth grade. You may recall from my first "Retrospection" post that I have recently spent three weeks teaching sixth grade science. During this time, I did indeed deal with the entire class. I just want to make that clear; each and every one of these girls has dealt with me for three weeks. Ok? Right. So why is it that they behaved as though they thought they could get away with the following things: social chatting, singing, shrieking, wandering randomly around the classroom, asking inane immaterial questions, cheering girls who left to use the bathroom upon both exit and entrance, and staging insult contests? I think maybe I should just record myself saying, "Ladies," and set it on continuous loop.
Their classwork was something else, too. I'm not entirely sure how much they might have gotten out of it had they actually been listening to me, but they didn't get much as things stood. And yeah, they were so not listening. I dropped in the question -- "...so when you have two equal rations and you set them up as an equation like this who's listening to me?" *pause for show of hands* *clear throat* "You, you, and you." "Huh? Wha?" "Exactly."
What is so difficult about the idea that a ratio of 3:4 is the same as a ratio of 6:8, 9:12, 12:16, etc? We're clearly having trouble with the meaning of "for every x blank1's, there are y blank2's" Circles, boxes, lines, arrows and every other type of visual explanation (cue "Alice's Restaurant", please) did zilch. But the cake was definitely taken when we discussed setting up an unknown proportion using cross-multiplication. We got as far as, "If both ratios are equal to 2:3, and the numerator of one is 8, it's denominator must be 12. If the denominator of the other is 18, we can either find the numerator by working with the 2:3 figure, or cross-multiply... which gets us 144=12x." Not bad. Wait for it -- X equals.... "14? 16? 10 -- no, wait!... uhm, uhm..." *sigh* "Ok, 144 is a square number..." (hint, hint).
"What's a square number??!"
Sixth grade. I swear. *headdesk*
The 8s were rather anti-climatic. Our only major issue was that we got shushed. Repeatedly.
See, the classrooms can be partitioned off by folding panels, which, as you'd expect, block very little in the way of noise. We had a quick lecture on how to graph inequalities in two variables, then turned the class loose on a practice worksheet, with yours truly bopping around being helpful in the face of "Ok, what I did was..."'s that made zero sense. Not sure some were in English. They were working in partners or small groups, and the noise level was about what you'd expect for a class of about 20 doing that. Except they were taking a test next door...
*panel opens* Can you keep it down? We have a test going on in here.
Oh, sure. Sorry. *classroom quiets. Panel shuts. Soft talking resumes.*
*panel opens* We really need to to keep it down.
(Huh? They're being quiet...) Yeah, we will. *classroom quiets. panel closes. whispers pick up. soft voices pick up.*
*panel opens*....
We did that for a bit. Finally, we got:
I'll just leave this open, then.
(.... o_O wtf?? You think it's too noisy, so you'll leave the door open?!) *not making eye contact, nodding*
*she walks away*
*glances around at class, all of whom are wearing same "wtf?" expressions. beat. entire room dissolves into doubled-over silent giggles.*
After that, every time the whispers turned to actual talking, someone would inevitably say, "Shh! It's open!!" and the room would dissolve again. (And yeah, the someone was me a few times...)
I have officially been dubbed "cool" and "our favorite sub" by this class.
Ok, so it's 9:40 pm and I've been home long enough to eat dinner, shower, and watch West Wing, but it's more live than the posts about what I did before Thanksgiving.
Don't think about that too hard.
Today's exciting adventure: Math! Spanning seven years of growth and learning, in four grades!
First up, a double period of Juniors, precalculus. Today's topic, graphing exponential functions. To begin with a review of properties of exponents.
Fortunately, the practice sheet came with a handy-dandy little box at the top, summarizing all of the relevant properties, because I don't remember what anything is called anymore... It's like, "What!? You do this, this, and that other thing. It had a name?" So, uh, I have two questions... Number 1. Why have you attempted to change 16(22x)=2x into base 4? Follow-up; why did you think 22x was in any way related to 4x2? Number 2. Why do you think 3x plus 1 is 4x?
Other than that, it went pretty smoothly.
Next we have
Ok, on to the good stuff. Sixth grade. You may recall from my first "Retrospection" post that I have recently spent three weeks teaching sixth grade science. During this time, I did indeed deal with the entire class. I just want to make that clear; each and every one of these girls has dealt with me for three weeks. Ok? Right. So why is it that they behaved as though they thought they could get away with the following things: social chatting, singing, shrieking, wandering randomly around the classroom, asking inane immaterial questions, cheering girls who left to use the bathroom upon both exit and entrance, and staging insult contests? I think maybe I should just record myself saying, "Ladies," and set it on continuous loop.
Their classwork was something else, too. I'm not entirely sure how much they might have gotten out of it had they actually been listening to me, but they didn't get much as things stood. And yeah, they were so not listening. I dropped in the question -- "...so when you have two equal rations and you set them up as an equation like this who's listening to me?" *pause for show of hands* *clear throat* "You, you, and you." "Huh? Wha?" "Exactly."
What is so difficult about the idea that a ratio of 3:4 is the same as a ratio of 6:8, 9:12, 12:16, etc? We're clearly having trouble with the meaning of "for every x blank1's, there are y blank2's" Circles, boxes, lines, arrows and every other type of visual explanation (cue "Alice's Restaurant", please) did zilch. But the cake was definitely taken when we discussed setting up an unknown proportion using cross-multiplication. We got as far as, "If both ratios are equal to 2:3, and the numerator of one is 8, it's denominator must be 12. If the denominator of the other is 18, we can either find the numerator by working with the 2:3 figure, or cross-multiply... which gets us 144=12x." Not bad. Wait for it -- X equals.... "14? 16? 10 -- no, wait!... uhm, uhm..." *sigh* "Ok, 144 is a square number..." (hint, hint).
"What's a square number??!"
Sixth grade. I swear. *headdesk*
The 8s were rather anti-climatic. Our only major issue was that we got shushed. Repeatedly.
See, the classrooms can be partitioned off by folding panels, which, as you'd expect, block very little in the way of noise. We had a quick lecture on how to graph inequalities in two variables, then turned the class loose on a practice worksheet, with yours truly bopping around being helpful in the face of "Ok, what I did was..."'s that made zero sense. Not sure some were in English. They were working in partners or small groups, and the noise level was about what you'd expect for a class of about 20 doing that. Except they were taking a test next door...
*panel opens* Can you keep it down? We have a test going on in here.
Oh, sure. Sorry. *classroom quiets. Panel shuts. Soft talking resumes.*
*panel opens* We really need to to keep it down.
(Huh? They're being quiet...) Yeah, we will. *classroom quiets. panel closes. whispers pick up. soft voices pick up.*
*panel opens*....
We did that for a bit. Finally, we got:
I'll just leave this open, then.
(.... o_O wtf?? You think it's too noisy, so you'll leave the door open?!) *not making eye contact, nodding*
*she walks away*
*glances around at class, all of whom are wearing same "wtf?" expressions. beat. entire room dissolves into doubled-over silent giggles.*
After that, every time the whispers turned to actual talking, someone would inevitably say, "Shh! It's open!!" and the room would dissolve again. (And yeah, the someone was me a few times...)
I have officially been dubbed "cool" and "our favorite sub" by this class.
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Just a note...
Date: 2004-12-03 08:07 am (UTC)Those sophomores were freshman.
Re: Just a note...
Date: 2004-12-03 08:28 am (UTC)