Fractions in the Food Industry

• What went well in the lesson? How do you know? The warm-up activity was a quick and simple way to focus students on the content for the day. As students completed the activity, the instructor was able to walk around the room, provide feedback, and observe where students needed re-teaching before moving on the lesson. When students finished the online quiz, the instructor reviewed rules for fractions before moving on with the lesson. The video provided a nice transition from basic fractions to fractions in the real-world. The differentiated recipe conversion activity was a good way to teach and practice fraction conversion using a real-world example. There are a million conversion worksheets available but this got students thinking about the importance of accuracy and joking about making that much food! • How well did planned assessments inform you of student progress? The warm-up activity provided the instructor with insight into what students knew and what they needed help with. Formative assessments are key – finding out what students know so you don’t waste time on it, finding out what students need help with so you can address it before moving on – to effective instruction! The formative assessments yielded better information that the homework assignment did. • How well did the lesson address diverse student needs? Differentiated activities were great for lower-level and higher-level learners and some students wanted to complete both. • What challenges did you encounter during the lesson? What did you do to address them? Technology is always an issue – firing up the computers, getting students to the correct website, figuring out how to turn up the volume. I always expect problems as do the students! Student participation varies. This class did a pretty good job participating – all students were engaged. If they don’t participate I can assign roles in the group – timer, note-taker, facilitator – to get reluctant students to participate. • What might you do differently? I like more activity for a warm-up so instead of having students complete the quiz online I might project it, give students individual white boards and time to solve each problem, and then display their white boards and review the problems individually. I’d also like to have students lead the review of the activities instead of the instructor asking for student answers. What would be really cool in a perfect world would be to make the gingerbread recipe ahead of time correctly and incorrectly and hand out samples to the students. Observe their reactions as they taste the incorrect recipe and then go from there. • What did you learn from your students that will inform future lessons? Walking around and taking notes on what students understood and were unsure of during the warm-up was useful but somewhat difficult for the instructor which is why I’d change it to a white board review. Students liked working with recipes which is why I’d incorporate more recipes for practice and bring in gingerbread made correctly and incorrectly to begin class. • Are there additional resources or support that might support your ongoing professional development? None I can think of!