After the Diagnostic, Starting The Decimal Unit

Kristen began her teaching of decimals with her Grade 5/6 class by using a problem that is based on one from Making Math Meaningful by Dr. Marian Small.  (MMM, p.160, Activity 8.1).  In MMM the problem is about estimating using whole numbers, and in this case Kristen changed the problem to involve decimal numbers to hundredths and thousandths. 

The lesson was set up in Three-Part Lesson format.  Here is the lesson template:

The Minds On focused on having the students order numbers.  She chose to do this to get the students thinking about how decimals can use the same numbers, but mean different things.  We had thought that perhaps some of the students may choose to use ordering as a strategy for solving the problem, but it was not one that we saw.

The action was this problem:  (You can see the minds on at the bottom of the page...It is an Eco-school after all!)

The students also completed a K-W-C as a class to help them flush out the information that was in the problem.

What was great about doing this was that the students got a chance to ask questions that were important to them.  There was some great discussion as to if the animals could only go in 2s or if they could go in groups of 3 or 4 (the answer was yes - but they could NOT go alone).  As well, one student touched upon the fact that the question was asking you to not only solve the problem, but EXPLAIN how you got your answer.  The second step that many students (and teachers) forget to do when solving a problem.

The students quickly got to work in pre-assigned pairs (based on optimal mis-match).  They used markers (no pencil's allowed) and didn't use our "banned" black and yellow (Yellow because you can't see it that well when your work is presented, and no black because that becomes our class editing pen). 

When the students were done their markers were collected.  Kristen really wanted to use the consolidation part of her lesson to help the students make sure that they were giving a really good / Level 3 answer.  So she asked the students the simple question of "What makes a really good answer?"  Using examples from their own work, the students then shared what they thought made a really good answer and why.  These thoughts were recorded on a large piece of chart paper:

The students now have an anchor that they co-created and that makes sense to them.  From it, informal success criteria was created about what makes a good answer.  A follow up lesson to this will be actually putting that success criteria on paper.

The students now were asked to add something that they thought was missing from their work.  They did this in pencil so Kristen could see what the improvement was.  (Hence why the markers were collected earlier on).  This was their independent practice.  They handed in their "updated" work and Kristen went to work providing descriptive feedback to them. 

Since we co-taught this lesson, Kristen was able to record what the students were saying about what made a good lesson as I was putting it down on the chart paper.  The student's focused on 5 different things.  To help her keep track of what the descriptive feedback she was giving to the students she numbered each item in the success criteria from 1-5.  As she gave each pair the descriptive feedback, she then recorded what she had given them feedback on, and what else she noticed that they need to work on.  Here is an example of how she recorded this information:

The first number is what she commented on, and the second or third numbers are what they still need more support in.  Its helpful to keep track of what you are saying to the student because if you notice that you are always writing the same thing, then they are not using the descriptive feedback that you are giving them and putting it into practice.

Here are the student samples showing not only their original answer, but their pencil additions and our black "editing" that matches the descriptive feedback that was given:

Start to finish, this entire lesson (Minds on, Action, Consolidation, Independent Work) took about 65 minutes.  All of the students were engaged, and all were participating in our class discussions.