Post #6

 Hi there!

We are still working with decimal numbers.  Today my coordinating teacher taught division of decimal numbers and yesterday she taught multiplication of decimals.  Friday before the break I taught adding and subtracting of decimals.  

Here's some info on the lesson my coordinating teacher did on multiplying decimals.  She had a plain piece of paper that she projected on the smart board.  Students had their math notebooks out and were told to write multiplying decimals at the top of a new page.   She started by showing an example or two of multiplying decimals.  She showed how multiplying decimals is the same as multiplying whole numbers and carefully showed how to move the decimal.  She noted how you need to count the number of decimal points to have in your final answer.  

For example .1 x .13 = .013   The decimal is over 3 from the left based on counting three total places for .1 and .13.  

She then wrote down two more practice problems.  She called on a student to explain how to do the problem and wrote down what they would do so all could see.

Students were then given 4 practice examples to do independently and I walked around the classroom to see if they were understanding the problems.   She reviewed them as a class.  

For homework last night the students had practice on adding, subtracting, and multiplying of decimals.  As I checked over the homework today, the common errors were students not lining up the decimal numbers when adding or subtracting decimals or not moving the decimal over to the right place when multiplying.  This made me think that because they were off for a week, it is probably a good idea in the future to mention important info of a lesson before starting the next lesson (ie. line up your decimal numbers when adding and subtracting).

I've also been thinking about the next project we have in this class.  I haven't started it yet,  but my coordinating teacher loaned me a book to read that has great games for elementary age students.  It's called Math Fact Fluency.