They no longer function.
Remember what I said about my impression that the class was moving too slowly and that kids were getting bored? At least some of the students in the 3rd hour physical science class may have finally found a challenge, though not in the sort of material I was hoping it would be. This Tuesday, the class was learning basic unit conversions--really just one conversion, from cm to inches. The task was very straight forward: measure a set of lines on the page in cm, then convert the values to inches using the method and conversion factor explained earlier in class, and presumably, the day before as well.
Some students got it right away and were done in a few minutes, but a couple didn't really follow what they were supposed to do. I explained it again and worked out an example for a few of the students who then understood, but there were a few remaining who, even after one-on-one attention, still had very little idea of what they were supposed to do. I had a hard time trying to figure out what was so complicated about the process, until I concluded that one young man didn't seem to understand how fractions worked. I'm not sure if he was a freshman or a sophomore (there are a few juniors in the class, so he could potentially be even older than I thought), but either way, I'm not sure how one gets that far without understanding such a critical basic mathematical concept. Unfortunately, I had to leave very shortly after making this realization. I plan letting Ms. Hardy know about this if she wasn't already aware, and hopefully I'll have a chance to squeeze some basic math review in where ever I can for him and any other students that might need it.
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I had a similar experience today while doing some exercises in order of operations. Several of the students had no idea that fractions were equivalent to division, making instruction a bit difficult.
ReplyDeleteMichael,
ReplyDeleteStudents entering classes with uneven backgrounds is a major challenge for teachers. There are a myriad of reasons for this-transiency, illness, cognitive development, poor attendance, and other disrupters of all sorts. It is good that you took some time to explain individually to the students. Perhaps Ms. Hardy will let you work with the students who don't understand fractions in order to catch them up quickly.
Do the students understand that much of the world is on the metric system?
Carol Cramer