Looooooooooong Division

10/21/10

I checked in homework today under close supervision of Amy - I think that I did a pretty good job. Just as we were transitioning to morning meeting, a student came to me holding his glasses in two spots - completely broken. I tried to tape them back together but the location of the break made it very difficult to fix. I consider myself an expert with working with duct tape, but this break was nothing that my handiwork could fix. Thus started a very long journey to find superglue - which ended the student and up in the custodian's office. Even he couldn't fix the glasses with superglue. I tried to make the student feel better by joking that we would just draw a scar on his forehead and call him Harry Potter for the day - which made him laugh. I asked the custodian if he had electrical tape because I thought it would be a better management tool for holding the glasses together. The student asked, "What's electrical tape?" I immediately turned the question into a teachable moment: "Well, remember last week when we studied conductors and insulators of electricity? Electrical tape is an insulator. Electricians use the tape to wrap copper electrical wires so that the circuits stay in place and are insulated - which makes the circuits safe. Behind every light switch, there is a piece of copper wire wrapped in electrical tape!" The student loved this real-world example and I think that he got a kick out of having his glasses taped in an insulator. In the end, the glasses were not wearable and he called his parents to have them grab a spare from home. All that wo

rk and there was a spare pair at home?! Hilarious!

Today we started loooooooooong division in math! Dr. Morse introduced the topic to the students, and I walked them through a few problems on the SmartBoard. So, do you remember the five steps of long division?

Division

Multiplication

Subtraction

Check that your answer is less than the divisor

Bring down the next number

Lots of kids remember the phrase "Does McDonald's Sell Cheese Burgurs?"

Cute.

Later in the day, one of our students had a tough day. It was a student in crisis moment that required Amy to fill out a lot of paperwork, involve many administrators, and have some hard conversations with the student. I could tell that it was really hard emotionally on Amy.

She was gone from lunch on, so I took over the rest of the day - which was mostly independent work, so it wasn't too hard to cover on the fly.

I went home with little to do because my magnet lesson got postponed until next week. I was relaxing and enjoying the one free night, when BAM! I received a voicemail from my supervisor - asking where my lesson plan for tomorrow was. OH NO! I completely forgot/the days slipped away from me. I called her in a panic, but she was so understanding! Thank goodness! We rescheduled for next Friday - when I'll be dressed up as Wonder Woman. Crisis averted.