We had to teach money this week so Miss Myers came up with a dining out online project for the kids to complete. They had to choose two people to go to dinner with them and then choose a restaurant to eat at from the choices on the Google Doc's page. They had to choose an entree for each person, add up how much they spent total and give two different ways to make that total. Then they had to answer the question if that place was to expensive and why. I did this on Thursday with my students and it flopped...majorly. Only three kids got it done. Now, I do realize that some of the technology wasn't able to connect to Google Apps which is a main part of the failure but most of the kids either tried once and turned off the computer and said it was broken or stared at the screen for 5-10 minutes until I finally made my rounds over to them. So, we stopped and I had a delightful teachable moment on how to troubleshoot computer problems.
So...on Friday we did the project again. I explained it better because maybe that was the problem, and I admitted it to my kids. I put an example of exactly what I wanted on the board and partnered them up to use one piece of technology between the two of them. I thought I had it all and it was going to work. By the end, most of my students had the total number of what they spent, and that's it. So when I asked what happened to the rest of the assignment, they stared at me and said, "What are you talking about? What rest of the assignment?" Well, that's when the freak out came because I was a little less then impressed that they didn't listen to any directions, or read the ones online or look at the board which we had spent 10 minutes going over. I chalked all of this up to, we need more practice with paper problems before the excitement of going online!
My second failure was on Friday as well. I found a packet of common core math problems (after 25 minutes of looking through worksheet after worksheet of people slamming common core on something that's clearly just a worksheet) that really allow students to struggle through a problem. So I figured every Friday we'll do a math problem like this so I put it up on the board and was super excited to see what they answered. When we went to read the problem aloud the person reading started reading the box that was half way down the page, so I stopped them and said read from the beginning...and they just stared at me and started reading the box half way down the page. So, I asked if anyone could help her find the beginning and only 2 students hands went up. So, I'm breathing a tad deeply at this point and I just tell them to read, go for it, let's preserve. At the end of the reading I asked what the question was and 4 students raised their hands. Only 3 out of those 4 students actually read to the bottom of the page to find out what the question was...everyone else took the three numbers from the box and added them together! Or just picked a number. Well, after a stern talking to about the massive importance of reading the whole page and finding the question, then going over what the answer was by doing all the math and discussing what they thought I decided to do these questions 3 times a week. So that they learn through making these mistakes and I learn that just because they should know these math problems, does not always mean they do.
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