Kelly Collova Dr.

Bulgar ELD 375 March 1, 2013 Field Report 2 Observation of Teaching and Learning The math lesson I observed was on fact families. Before Mrs. Reil taught this lesson, she hoped the students would gain a deeper understanding of how multiplication and division are the inverse of each other and how they belong in the same family. Mrs. Reil's class has been working on fact families. The day before teaching this lesson, Mrs. Reil was teaching another lesson on fact families. At the end of the lesson, Mrs. Reil said that she noticed her students were very comfortable with fact families and needed more of a challenging activity than the one she planned for the day I was observing. Mrs. Reil planned this lessons activity the morning of since the students struggled with the long division process and identifying the parts of the division problem in their homework from the night before. She looked through numerous math assessment books for ideas and decided to have the students do the inverse match activity. Mrs. Reil noticed that the date, February 26, 2013, could be written as a fact family because the numbers in the date are multiples of each other, when written as 2/26/13. She planned on starting the lesson by writing the shorthand date on the board and asking the students to write in their math log why this date is interesting. After giving the students a few minutes to answer the question, she planned on asking the students to share their answers. She was then planning on asking the students to label the divisor, dividend, and quotient of the twenty-six divided by thirteen division problem. She decided that she was going to have the students who did not recognize the fact family

and labeling of the problem to sit on the rug with her. She planned to explain to the students on the rug the relationship between the numbers in the date and work with them on more inverse relationships. She was also planning on going over the parts of the division problem with these students. She planned to have the students that did recognize the fact family and the parts of the division problem to do the inverse match activity with a partner in groups at their tables. After the students on the rug got more practice, she planned on having the students on the rug join the students at the tables doing the inverse match activity. Mrs. Reil started off the lesson by writing the date on the board and a question for the students to answer. The board read, 2/26/13, and underneath read, Awesome date! Why? Please answer in your math log. She ran the rest of the lesson exactly as she planned. About ten students were not able to identify that the date could be written as a fact family and were not able to label the parts of the division problem. She called the students who were struggling to the rug and had the rest of the students do the inverse match activity. For the inverse match activity, she distributed digit cards from two to nine to each student in small Ziploc bags. The students paired up into partners at their tables and drew two digit cards from the bag. They then recorded a fact family table of the inverse multiplication problems on one paper for the numbers they drew and then on another piece of paper they wrote the inverse division problems for the numbers. They repeated this step nine more times so that they had ten different inverse problems on both papers. After working together with their partners, they traded papers with other partners at their

table and matched the inverse multiplication problems with the correct matching inverse division problems. I observed four students do the inverse match activity. As the students were working together I noticed that they collaborated the answers for each problem. After they drew the digit cards from the bag they would say things like, Oh I know! Nine times four is thirty-six. I know the inverse, write it down! Thirty-six divided by four is nine and thirty-six divided by nine is four! I also noticed that they kept checking to see if they drew the same two numbers because they did not want to have a replicate of the same fact family table. I loved how the students were so activity engaged in this activity because it was hands on. They were so excited when they drew the cards from the bag. I liked how if one student did not understand the concept of the activity, their partner explained it to the student and helped them out. I also liked how the students used vocabulary words such as divisor, dividend, and quotient. Mrs. Reil reflected on the lesson and activity after the lesson was over. She thought the lesson went really well because it confirmed to her that the students know fact families very well. The lesson and activity also showed her which students need more practice with identifying the parts of a division problem and solving a long division problem. Now after reflecting on this lesson and activity, Mrs. Reil now plans to have the next lesson cover long division instead of eight and nine fact family tables.