A Game of Wacamole in my classroom

On Wednesday, I had a double period with one 6th grade class and I got lazy.  I decided to let them work in their Eureka Workbooks on a lesson about solving Problems with Percents.  I decided to let them work at their tables since they would be doing the lesson in their workbooks.  They began working and I began circulating through the room following my normal route and not chasing hands.

They stayed at their tables in groups.  Even though the lesson claimed to be about solving real-world problems, it was still abstract and didn’t give much opportunity for creativity in the math.  Within a very few minutes, it became obvious that they did not have a conceptual understanding of “percent” and also did not feel the need to think very much since they had the workbooks.

It became a game of Wacamole.  I would arrive at a table and spend a minute getting them back on task and try to guide them without teaching too much.  Then I would move to the next group and notice that I was leaving frustrated and confused students in my wake.  

Most of them raised their hands for help at first.  When I didn’t get there quick enough they got off task and started fooling around.  I began moving faster from group to group creating even more frustration and probably wearing ruts in the carpeting.  The room became louder and more off task.  I actually resorted to writing names on the board and threatening loss of recess.

Then I stopped and reflected.  These were the same kids who worked so well the previous day when I gave them better activities and had them work at white boards.  I realized it was not them and it was not me, It was the lesson.

I stopped the class, got their attention (which took some effort) and had a heart-to-heart with them.  I apologized for the way the class had gone.  I congratulated them for being excellent students and explained that I had given them a bad task that did not allow them to explore the concept of percent.  These kids needed a more rich and concrete task.  

Percent lessons are notorious for being formulaic and rote.  It is a very simple small idea that is used for convenience, but it has opportunity to get them thinking deeply about what is meant by “percent”.  (Literally “Per One Hundred”)

I did not use this task the next period. I heard one of students talking about black holes from their science class.  I decided to flex my Physics muscles and have a class discussion.  We talked about the nature of black holes which evolved into the nature of reality.  One of them mentioned that we all see colors differently.  This led to the proposition that perhaps we all have the same favorite color but we describe it differently. We never touched on percent, but I did get to stop them at the end and reveal to them that the class had been a math discussion and by learning more math, they would be able to have a better understanding of such abstract concepts.  They left smiling.  I took a nap.