Heather Voyer

MIAA 350 Mathematics Instruction

Reflections

Reflection #1: Grade 5, Human Number Line
As a warm up today, I had written a variety of numbers in the form of percent, fraction,
and decimal in order to have my kids create a human number line. I had two kids get up
and be the 0 and 1 point that stretched across the front of my room. The rest of the kids
each had their own whiteboard so they could plot each number as they were shown. Next
I would show each number at a time, for example, the fraction

and students were asked

first to think about where this fraction should be place on the human line and then plot
the fraction on their own whiteboard. Next I would give the fraction card to a student and
call upon a table group to tell the student where to stand on the human number line.
After the student was placed on the line, the rest of the class would give thumbs up or
thumbs down telling me if they agreed or disagreed with the students placement. We
went through this same procedure with about six other numbers.

I was thoroughly impressed with how well my students were able to manipulate the
numbers gave them because they were all in forms: percent, fraction, and decimal. At
first they struggled changing their thinking back to decimals because when we did this we
were entrenched in fractions. However it was a good way to introduce how all three are
related and just a different way of writing the same number. We did this a few more
times and each time I could see my students understanding increase with each time.


Reflection #2: Grade 5, Percent Scales
One part of MIAA 350 that I enjoyed learning about were the percent scales. In
my years of teaching fifth grade math and percent, I had never seen it taught in the idea
of a scale. After introducing the meaning of percent and having my students manipulate
percent into fractions and decimals, I introduced the percent scale. I chose to only use
100%, 50%, 10%, 5%, and 1% because I wanted to help my students be organized in
their thinking and also be able to look for patterns in those percents.
The first time I introduced the scales, many of my students struggled. However, I
didnt give up and returned the following day to the scales again, and it seemed as if the
second day the light bulbs began to go on and my students began really picking up the
scales. They began to observe the patterns in the scales between the 100%, 10% and 1%
and then the 50% and 5% - noticing each time the same digits appeared, but the decimal
would just be in a different location.
As my students began to catch on to the scales, I began asking them to solve for a
percent of a number in at least two different ways. For example, the problem could have
asked them to find 48% of 78. They would show me their percent scale.
100% = 78
50% = 39
10% = 7.8
5% = 3.9
1% = 0.78
Then they could solve this problem by 50% - 2% (39 1.58 = 37.44) or by 10% + 10% +
10% + 10% + 5% + 3% (7.8 + 7.8 + 7.8 + 7.8 + 3.9 + 2.34). Many students also realized
you could set up the problem by: (7.8 x 4) + 3.9 + (1.58 x 3) and arrive at the same
answer.
After my students were feeling successful with the scale, I began asking them
mental questions regarding percent. For example, I gave them a scenario regarding
eating dinner out at a restaurant in which the bill was $32, and we left a 20% tip for the
waitress. Students had to mentally calculate the tip. Hands all around my room were
shooting up because they knew the answer so quickly!
The ones that did struggle understanding the percent scales were the students who
continue to struggle with their number sense. However, after working with a small
group of these struggling learners, they are slowly beginning to understand the scale
better.
Many of my students expressed their desire to continue using the scale even
when it wasnt required of them. A homework assignment was given after students had
learned the scale, which were all word problems. Students werent told they had to use
the scales, but many chose to anyways.