Peach Plains Elementary

Recently, my math class went to Peach Plains Elementary in Grand Haven to teach a lesson on measurement to a first and fourth grade class. We split up the class into groups of two and divide ourselves between the first and fourth grade classes. I was sent into the fourth grade class. The activity that we ran was measuring three items in the school building, which was a backup plan from the playground equipment we had planned to measure because of the rain. My partner and I had a group of four kids, three girls and a boy, and we were able to measure the three objects pretty easily. One girl was rather energetic, measuring the objects quickly enough to prompt us to tell her to measure the objects from another direction. At the end, we went back to the classroom to perform a bit of multiplication to determine how long the objects were in inches. This is where I had my moment.

The one boy in my group was an energetic boy, seemingly a troublemaker, and he didn’t seem to enjoy the math he had to do. I went and sat down next to the boy and walked him through the process of the problem. I would try to give him easier questions and ask him what the answer to those questions were. Then, when we had the answers, I would ask him what the answers added up to. This was mainly because the equations I gave him were a broken down version of the problem we were trying to do. After the experience, I hope the boy has a decent understanding of the point of what I was trying to teach him. Overall, I thought the experience was a good one.