Data Gathered by Lee Gabor to show Coach, Courtney Morawski

Mr. Amaya is teaching a math lesson similar to the one he will teach when we complete the lesson plan. He has such a gentle manner with the children. The class management is excellent, but some students are having a hard time with this concept.

The lesson that I observe him teaching is in Spanish and I don’t understand every word. The students are using volume containers to compare gallons, quarts, pints, and cups. They can see water poured into the cup (from sink in classroom) and that cup is poured into pint. Students tally how many cups it takes to make a pint.

Then pints are poured into quarts and then quarts into gallons. While students can see the relationship of X units of the liquid combine to create 1 unit of the larger measure, they don’t seem to remember the numbers 15 minutes later.

AFTER THE LESSON:

Lee: Mr. Amaya, is there anything you can think of that will help them better remember the numbers.

Mr. Amaya: I think some type of hands-on paper would do that. They understand what we are doing, but they don’t immediately recall how many cups equal a pint, etc. We need something to help them with that and Everyday Math doesn’t give a good sample.

Lee: Let’s check for other resources. We can check online and also I’ll talk to Mr. Padgett and see if there is anything in the AMI (Accelerated Math Initiative) toolkit that will help.

 LATER

 Lee: Were you able to find anything on the Internet that might help.

 Mr. Amaya: I checked a few math sites, but I didn’t find a good project for converting measurements. Did you find anything?

 Lee: Actually, I did. Mr. Padgett didn’t have anything among the AMI info, but yesterday he, Mr. Nazeri, Ms. Witthoft, and I attended the Area 1 math workshop and we actually did a project that will help your students. We took construction paper squares and folded them, showing 2 half-gallons equal a gallon, 4 quarts do, 8 pints, and 16 cups. Once we folded, we wrote the measuring units on the paper and then combined them in the book. I made an extra copy to give you and I think if students use this, it will help them visualize.

 Mr. Amaya: You know that most won’t get it right away.

 Lee: What can you do to help them get the concept sooner?

 Mr. Amaya: I think first we should make the booklets while we also pour the water into the different size containers. Then we can have one child in each group to explain what they learned. Finally, I think I’ll have them review this every few days for a few weeks and maybe they can better remember the conversions.

 Lee: That sounds like a good plan. Will you have a way of assessing how well they remember?

 Mr. Amaya: If I spend the next two weeks on this and then give an exam, I think we’ll know which students understand.

 Lee: How will you give the exam, rather what will you ask?

 Mr. Amaya: I could have them do the folding again with construction paper, but have them label without any help by looking at the containers.

 Lee: That will definitely determine if they recall how they did the original and if they understand the connection between the units. This sounds like a good plan. Please let me know how it has turned out.

 Mr. Amaya carried through with his plan of measurement conversion foldables and most of the students did well on the assessment. Those who didn’t are being reinforced by additional work on this topic.