Since it’s October I picked a candy theme estimate from Estimation180. We chatted for the first 5 minutes about our favourite Halloween candy.

After some Too high, too low, and best guesses we revealed the answer:

If you teach MEL3E you may know that regular attendance from some students is an issue. There always seems to be a few students you only see once or maybe twice a week. Years ago I used to give these kids hassle when they came to class. I would give them a lecture about attending regularly….and if you think of all the adult interactions that kid had that day most likely none of them were positive. And I contributed to that. Even though they made the decision to come to class that day. And you know what….most likely that kid wouldn’t be back for some time.

Now….with this group,  all interactions are positive. I want that student who comes only on Thursday to have at least one positive interaction with an adult that day. I want them walking out after the class thinking that my room is “good” place. I feel they will be more likely to come back to school even if it’s just for math class. If they are there some good will happen.

So, with different kids being absent on different days it becomes tough to get every kid the practice and learning they need. The mastery days and spiralling works well to address this. If a kid is away all week they won’t necessarily miss the whole banking unit. We’ll hit this again next cycle. Mastery days will allow kids to work on what they need.

Today wasn’t technically a mastery day, but the day was broken into a few tasks.

1. Some students finished (or started) the transaction activity from yesterday.
2. Some students practiced more with updating their account balances from transactions.
3. Some students worked on past work (timezones, best deals, tax problems).

Tomorrow we’re on to credit cards.