It was interesting (yet frustrating) to watch how groups tackled this one. Some groups decided to figure out how many cups were in each package and use 'cups' as their unit rate. Some groups seemed obsessed with changing all the units to grams. Some groups wrote out some fractions but weren't really sure what they meant or what to do with them. Finally, a couple of groups figured out what they needed to do. It all took much longer than I expected it to. I sense more proportional reasoning in our future.
Things seemed to flow smoothly yesterday so we continued right along with the distributive property. Once again students worked in groups of three at the whiteboards. I gave out these problems one at a time. Some groups motored through the questions, while other groups seemed to be a little more dysfunctional. I think I need to do more get to know you type stuff every day. We did some at the start of the semester but I just kind of assumed everyone would be working well with everyone else by this point. I really like Laura Wheeler's idea of having students introduce themselves every day and answering one icebreaker type question. It's probably a tough thing to be changing at this point but I'll keep it in mind for next time.
Once groups were finished we consolidated and I gave them some questions to practice individually.
The best part of the past couple of days was seeing students' confidence grow as they figured things out. That's what makes all of this so worthwhile.
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