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State legislator is teacher for day in American Education Week
By John Higgins
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Friday, Nov 21, 2008
Ohio Rep. Kathleen Chandler, D-Kent, stood at the overhead projector Thursday morning in Becky Miller's third-grade classroom at Dunbar Primary School in Tallmadge and taught math for a day.
The first problem on the five-question warm-up exercise was a toughie: 18 divided by six.
''This one is going to be a challenge for them because we are just learning multiplication right now,'' Miller told her.
''Can I say something?'' Chandler ventured, rephrasing the question for the class.
''I was thinking that if you had 18 cookies and there were six children, how many cookies would each one of them get? Can you think about that?''
And that's when a little light clicked on for Jaime Hylton, who remembered that the class had read a book by Pat Hutchins about a mother who bakes a dozen cookies for two children, and they get six cookies each.
But then more and more children arrive, reducing each child's share (until Grandma saves the day by bringing dozens more cookies).
''We read a book called The Doorbell Rang and it was just like that,'' Jaime said.
Her classmate, Juleah Landwehr chimed in that they had made a text-to-text connection. Make that a text-to-Ohio-House-representative connection.
Making such connections is what it's all about in this part of the year, Miller said. Her students need to visualize mathematical concepts before moving on to memorization of facts, which comes later in the school year.
Miller had invited Chandler to teach for a day in recognition of the National Education Association's 87th annual American Education Week, which began Sunday.
Chandler helped teach reading and gave the students a government lesson drawn from the current debate in the legislature about what should be Ohio's official state amphibian: bullfrog or yellow spotted salamander (she's pulling for the salamander).
Chandler also contributed a state flag and a letter for a care package the students are preparing for a soldier in Iraq.
She said she was impressed by what the students — many dressed in the colorful tie-dye shirts they made in class to wear on special occasions — already knew about math.
She asked the students what their strategies were for solving 138 plus 91 and why it was important to keep the ones column lined up with the ones column and the 10s lined up with the 10s.
''Can someone explain to me why it's important to keep them in the right rows,'' she asked.
''If you put them in different places, it will change the place value and you'll mess up the whole thing,'' David Jeffery explained.
Classmate Jon Joniec's hand shot up next. He already was reading ahead to the next question — 18 minus 15 — and he had the answer.
The last question on the warm-up test was a word problem: If marbles cost five pennies each, how much would six marbles cost?
The students offered different strategies such as counting by fives, or multiplying five by three and then doubling it.
Nathan Blaser looked at the clock on the wall. He figured that when the big hand was on the six, that represented 30 minutes, as in 11:30 a.m.
''So you looked at the clock and you figured out that each number is five apart and you counted by five until you got to six times,'' Chandler said. ''Oh, that's very interesting.''
Nathan's teacher thought so, too.
Another math teacher had suggested using a clock to teach multiplication at a recent in service Miller had attended.
''I had never thought to use the clock for multiplication and I'm totally impressed that you totally thought of that on your own,'' Miller said to Nathan. ''I was going to show the class that, but now you get to show the class.''
After the warm-up, Miller worked with the students on arrays — a way of visualizing multiplication by counting rows and how many are in each row — by pretending to construct square and rectangular boxes for chocolates.
At the end of the lesson, each child received a Hershey's chocolate kiss and filed out for lunch.
Chandler will need to summon all of her math skills next year, when Gov. Ted Strickland takes on the thorny issue of funding public schools. She and her fellow Democrats now have a majority in the Ohio House of Representatives.
''We're going to do something about it this year,'' she said.
John Higgins can be reached at 330-996-3792 or jhiggins@thebeaconjournal.com.
Ohio Rep. Kathleen Chandler, D-Kent, stood at the overhead projector Thursday morning in Becky Miller's third-grade classroom at Dunbar Primary School in Tallmadge and taught math for a day.
Get the full article here.
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akron, oh
Posted 08:44 AM, 11/21/2008
Chandler ventured, rephrasing the question for the class.
''I was thinking that if you had 18 cookies and there were six children, how many cookies would each one of them get? Can you think about that?''
ONE each IF the government is involved..... Due to tax increases that will happen. We also have to figure in redistribution of cookie wealth. Plus put a few away in the rainy day fund......
Each child will get one cookie....
akron, oh
Posted 06:01 AM, 11/22/2008
If the government is involved, they will come again next year and ask for more cookies.
