Mr.+Luebke

October 12, 2009

Taught a lesson in 5th grade today on the beginnings of division. Began with lecture and notes on what division is. The inverse (opposite) operation of division is multiplying. Hit every student in the room with one of a handful of questions repeatedly. "What is the opposite of division?" "What is the inverse operation of addition?" "What does inverse mean?" (verbal linguistic) Then we took note of the three different ways to write division. Takneya actually recognized that a fraction is a division problem. Two other students also knew the division fraction thing. In order to cement the concept that multiplying and dividing are opposite operations I put an example on the board. "5 x 2 = 10 so 10 ÷ 5 = 2" I used some flash card combinations to cement the idea. (reading it on note cards.) Then I asked the students to create 10 pairs of multiplying and dividing problems of their own. A student asked if she could do harder problems, and I encouraged students to make the problems as difficult as they liked. This was the differentiation in the assignment to. Students chose how difficult the multiplying and dividing problems would be. Students were also encouraged to do more than 25 pairs for homework if they could. Differentiated Products... there is no answer key. These will be 25 different assignments. The content of multiplying and dividing being inverse operations is the same. The process is similar. Reniah wrote extra large problems randomly around her page. Milon wrote in paragraph form. Other students mostly did one pair of problems on a line.

Comment by Mr. Dretske

I like the idea of answering their own problems since the point of the lesson was looking at the inverse operations of Multiplication and Division. The assignment gives a clear idea of self-knowledge in the topic covered. You can better understand where students may need the help as the unit moves forward.