We revisited the decimal debacle today, from a very different angle. Instead of trying to work with lining up decimals for calculating, we returned to money and her mental calculations followed.
First she worked with the image shown below, and then, when I asked her to look at the problem written on the next image, a common thing happened. Initially, her response was $2.110 (yes, two dollars, one ten was her verbal response), reached within seconds of looking at the set of numbers. But, then she said, “that doesn’t sound right”, to which, I agreed.
I waited, for probably five minutes, while she played with her cat toys, danced around, chewed on things, ate some food, and traveled to the moon and back for all I know. Then, suddenly, she says, “That’s three dollars and ten cents altogether.”
I decided I didn’t need to launch into a lesson on moving between the right and left sides of the decimal.
From there, we moved on to a variety of sites with games of her choosing.
We visited BBC’s Bamzooki and she progressed through the Probability activity, which included percentage, ratio, and fractional calculations.
Then, we went through some activities that involved processing concepts related to friction and circuitry, and finally English, a few math related questions, and then Minecraft.
The English exploration was primarily one of two things, either identifying components within text demonstrating comprehension, or selection of proper homophone.
