"Telling Time to Every Fifth Minute"

For the last three weeks we have been teaching the students both about small money (coins) and about telling time. Both the teacher and I are unhappy with the workbook presentation and order in the Houghton-Mifflin series and therefore we've adapted the lessons in a manner that has been somewhat less confusing, with more intermediary steps. I've noticed that kids still need reinforcement and building upon the idea of money, especially through hands-on realia and concretization of experience to reinforce the fairly abstract concepts that are involved, from a Piagetian framework of conservation of form and equilibriation of adaptive behavior in structured context. I offer herein a set of four lesson plans for the week since I am taking the Math section of the class over entirely for the week. Friday will be a review of the lessons learned during the week.

1. Objective: To teach the students how to tell time in a consistent manner to every five minutes on the clock, using both the large yellow clock in a shared activity and the small student clocks in guided activities.

2. Anticipatory Set: The children will be gathered up front and we will review what they've learned already about telling time, which is to the half-hour, and how to write minutes, and how many seconds are in a minute. I will begin by first asking students which direction is clockwise, and which counter or anti-clockwise. I will then ask them how many minutes are in an hour. I will then challenge them by setting the master clock to the five minute increment, and have them guess what time it is.

3. Instruction: I will explain to the students that the large hand moves in five minute increments, and we will practice counting by fives as I move the clock up to sixty minutes. We will repeat this and then sing a song, in which the kids slap their right and then their left thighs while counting to sixty by fives.

4. Check for understanding: I will first ask several small groups to sing the song by themselves, with a leader who will move the clock to five minute intervals during the performance. Then I will ask individuals to tell me what time it is as I move the minute hand to various five minute increments on the clock.

5. Guided Practice: The students will return to their desks and monitors will pass out the student clocks. We will practice setting the clock to various five minute intervals, first with a five minute walk around the clock.

6. Independent practice: I will give them various times to set on their clocks from my master clock and then I will have them complete corresponding work sheet activities.

7. Closure: Kids will be reconvened in the last five minutes before lunch and we will review the lesson for the day, with the kids explaining to me how to tell time to five minutes, pretending I'm a Martian named "Sir Gilgamesh" who doesn't understand earth time.

"Adding Two Sets of Change to One Dollar"

Hugh M. Lewis

Preface: The basis of this lesson was the observation from tests and from activities at our store that the kids have been confused on the idea of adding together two things, or two sets of coins, to create a final price or cost for an item. The intention therefore is to build on their prior knowledge and limited experience with money handling in a spiraled and scaffolded manner, reinforcing this previous experience and extending it gradually to larger amounts of money, up to one dollar.

1. Objective: To teach the students how add together two sets of coins, by first grouping each set and adding each with a total, and then to practice adding together the two sets.

2. Anticipatory Set: The children will be gathered up front and we will review what they've learned already about counting money, including how many pennies make a dollar, how many quarters make a dollar, how many dimes make a dollar, how to count to 100 by fives, tens and twenty-five increments, and how to count various combinations of small money using the large money pockets. I will then give the students several examples of two items, each priced differently, and ask them, if they want to buy both items at the same time, how much it will cost, and have them try to figure out the total cost. I will do this with several sets of things.

3. Instruction: I will explain and demonstrate to the students how to group two sets of coins together, and to practice adding both sets together. The students will use their white-boards for this part of the instruction, except for South-paw Bryan, who will be given a clip-board and white paper instead.

4. Check for understanding: I will arrange the large pocket coins together in different combinations, and, with the kids still on the carpet with their whiteboards, to try to total the different combinations of coins I give them.

5. Guided Practice: The students will return to their desks with their white boards, and I will have the monitors pass out the coin-bottles and students will be paired off at their desks. We will then practice as a group various combinations of money.

6. Independent practice: Students will be passed out various sets of items, in pairs, with price tags on each item. The challenge for each pair-team will be to solve the amount and write the amount on their white-boards.

7. Closure: "Sir Gilgamesh" who doesn't understand earth money either, needs to be explained how much money will be needed to buy some pieces of plastic fruit in order to eat, and the kids, as a whole group, need to explain to him how to do it. Reinforcement will continue for this lesson over the next several weeks by allowing students to buy two different items at our noon-store rather than just one thing at a time, as has been the rule previously.

"Telling Time to Every Fifth Minute"

Hugh M. Lewis

For the last three weeks we have been teaching the students both about small money (coins) and about telling time. Both the teacher and I are unhappy with the workbook presentation and order in the Houghton-Mifflin series and therefore we've adapted the lessons in a manner that has been somewhat less confusing, with more intermediary steps. I've noticed that kids still need reinforcement and building upon the idea of money, especially through hands-on realia and concretization of experience to reinforce the fairly abstract concepts that are involved, from a Piagetian framework of conservation of form and equilibriation of adaptive behavior in structured context. I offer herein a set of four lesson plans for the week since I am taking the Math section of the class over entirely for the week. Friday will be a review of the lessons learned during the week.

1. Objective: To teach the students how to tell time in a consistent manner to every five minutes on the clock, using both the large yellow clock in a shared activity and the small student clocks in guided activities.

2. Anticipatory Set: The children will be gathered up front and we will review what they've learned already about telling time, which is to the half-hour, and how to write minutes, and how many seconds are in a minute. I will begin by first asking students which direction is clockwise, and which counter or anti-clockwise. I will then ask them how many minutes are in an hour. I will then challenge them by setting the master clock to the five minute increment, and have them guess what time it is.

3. Instruction: I will explain to the students that the large hand moves in five minute increments, and we will practice counting by fives as I move the clock up to sixty minutes. We will repeat this and then sing a song, in which the kids slap their right and then their left thighs while counting to sixty by fives.

4. Check for understanding: I will first ask several small groups to sing the song by themselves, with a leader who will move the clock to five minute intervals during the performance. Then I will ask individuals to tell me what time it is as I move the minute hand to various five minute increments on the clock.

5. Guided Practice: The students will return to their desks and monitors will pass out the student clocks. We will practice setting the clock to various five minute intervals, first with a five minute walk around the clock.

6. Independent practice: I will give them various times to set on their clocks from my master clock and then I will have them complete corresponding work sheet activities.

7. Closure: Kids will be reconvened in the last five minutes before lunch and we will review the lesson for the day, with the kids explaining to me how to tell time to five minutes, pretending I'm a Martian named "Sir Gilgamesh" who doesn't understand earth time.

"Working With Sets of Change Worth More than One Dollar"

Hugh M. Lewis

Preface: Extend the previous lesson on counting money to include sets of change greater than a dollar, which is a natural extension of counting beyond one-hundred. Even though the kids are only by standards required to count to one hundred, many real life situations that they are encountering daily, like page numbers, costs, addition problems, numbers more than 100.

1. Objective: To teach the students how add together coins the net amount of which is greater than a dollar by allowing them to separate the coins into one set worth a dollar and then the remaining coins that are less than a dollar. (Note, only amounts between 1 and two dollars will be used in this set of activities.)

2. Anticipatory Set: The children will be gathered up front and we will review how to count two sets of coins and add them together. I will then show them a real dollar bill, and ask them how much this can be worth in coins--in pennies, dimes, quarters, and finally nickels. They will practice showing me with the large coin pockets. I will then ask them how to count out enough to buy something I have in my hand that costs one dollar and 15 cents.

3. Instruction: I will explain and demonstrate to the students how to group various sets of coins to one dollar amounts, say two quarters and five dimes or 10 nickels. I will then show them how to count from a large set of coins to one hundred, remove this set, and then count the remaining number of coins. I will model this for them several times over.

I will show them how to write with their white boards the dollar sign, and how to write amounts of money greater than a dollar.

4. Check for understanding: I will have several objects up front, and tell them verbally the price of each, greater than a dollar, and have students volunteer showing how to make the correct amount of change on the large money pockets. Then they will use their white boards to write in standard notation the amount of money.

5. Guided Practice: The students will return to their desks with their white boards, and I will have the monitors pass out some flash cards with names of things and the amounts written on the back, and they will practice drawing as pairs the various possible combinations to make the amount, separating the amount into one dollar and remainder or "left-over change" sets.

6. Independent practice: Students will be passed out their money bottles with various amounts greater than a dollar. Their challenge will then be to add the amounts they have and guess the total amount, working as pairs. The bottles will be exchange and passed around the room between the different pair-groups. The number of the bottle will be matched with a list of the total in each bottle beforehand.

7. Closure: "Sir Gilgamesh" has to buy various things at the earth store that cost over a dollar. The students must show him how to do it. Some items over a dollar will be put into our student store as extra reinforcement for this lesson, and the students will all be given a single one-dollar bill to add to their money sets.

"Friday Review-day: Playing the Time is Money Game"

Hugh M. Lewis

Preface: Assessment can come through informal means that demonstrate through performance concrete comprehension of the knowledge from previous lessons in an integrated manner. The point of this lesson is to provide students with a game simulation framework as the basis for review and assessment of their previous week's and month's lessons concerning counting money and telling time. This kind of informal assessment requires an alternative kind of lesson plan format:

1. Objective: To review the concepts learned by the students regarding both telling time down to the minute and adding money to over one dollar by playing a game in pair teams. Students in their pairs will be the worker and the banker. All the teams will be given the same sets of activities to do, for specific amounts of time. A class time-keeper will set the time. Time keeper will rotate around the room. The workers must do the activity for the specified amount of time. Then the banker pay the students the amount of money the activity is worth. Half way through the game, I will call out "stop" and then "switch" from "Day-shift" to "Night-shift" and the students will change rolls, the banker becoming the worker and vice versa. At the end of the period, the students will get together and total the amount of money they have collected, all coming to less than one dollar. They will see if they can

1. Run in place for 37 seconds. Payment: 43 cents.

2. Turn one's arms around like a helicopter for 26 seconds. Payment: 37 cents.

3. Close one's eyes and put one's hands on one's eyes for 17 seconds

Payment: 29 cents.

4. Freeze in one curious stand for 45 whole seconds Payment: 53 cents.

1. Write your name over and over for 38 seconds Payment: 34 cents.

2. Do jumping jacks for 23 seconds. Payment: 24 cents.

3. Put the right hand on one's head and the left hand rub the belly for 14 seconds.

Payment: 46 cents.

4. Freeze in some other curious position for 24 seconds. Payment: 28 cents.

Modeling: Have a girl and a boy student model each activity before beginning, appointing a new time keeper for each set. Tell them "ready, set, and go" each time round. When the timer buzzer goes off, yell "stop."

Assessment: Observe the different pair groups during their performance. At the end of the lesson, have each student count the total amount of change in their possession and to write the amount on their white boards. Check each person's amount to see if they are correct.

Day-shift total: $1.62

Night-shift total: $1.32

"Basic Geometric Shapes: Round, Flat, 3-dimensional"

Hugh M. Lewis

Lesson plans focus this week upon teaching students the basic shapes, including a square, triangle, circle, as well as a spheroid, a cube, a cone, and a cylinder. Some foam shapes have been procured as well as two-dimensional diagrams to permit the children to have hands on work with shapes and to talk about shapes, perform simple experiments to demonstrate which shapes will role and which will sit flatly on a surface, etc. These shapes will be augmented by natural objects that have similar shapes, allowing students to identify them by their shape and describe them by their surfaces.

1. Objective: Students will learn how to distinguish various kinds of prototypical shapes according to whether they have round or flat surfaces, and will be able to identify these surfaces in relation to cubes, cylinders, cones and spheroids.

2. Anticipatory Set: The children will be gathered up front and we will go over the differences in two-dimensional shapes in squares, triangles, circles, etc. Then we will pass out a set of basic shapes and in a shared session allowing kids to handle the shapes, we will discuss their surfaces and the distinctive features of each object.

3. Instruction: I will explain to the students the basic elements and features of each shape, drawing particular attention to the difference between round and flat surfaces, and we will look at each shape analytically to identify both its round and its curved surfaces.

4. Check for understanding: Students will be asked to identify different sets of shapes, and will be asked to identify the key surfaces and features of each kind of shape.

5. Guided Practice: The students will return to their desks and form groups and each group will be given a set of natural objects (balls, cans, paper tubes, a conical hat made from construction paper, etc.) and be asked to sort these objects out according to their shapes and their surfaces. Students will then do a page of worksheet activities using a transparency from the overhead.

6. Independent practice: Students will do a set of associated worksheet activities from their workbooks and extra pages we have obtained and will do these pages independently. The individual student's work will be checked by myself and my master teacher as students complete them.

7. Closure: Kids will be reconvened in the last five minutes before lunch upon the carpet in their respective work groups and we will review the lesson for the day, discussing the various objects that they have, and identifying different kinds of natural objects in terms of their basic shapes and surfaces. They will present as a group to the class their shapes and their reasons for the sort.