Teaching somewhere between 4th and 5th

This week was a blur, and it's a good thing I keep a copy of my plans in the back of my binder, so I can look and see what we did. This was the week where we started 4th and 5th grade math. It is crazy and messy, but when you get down to it, I love teaching math, no matter how many lessons are going on at once.

I found myself being more dramatic than ever while teaching them math, and honestly, it is hard to act even more dramatic than how I am when I read Sahara Special, which feels more like a monologue that I am performing for them. I do worry though for how I can meet my students' math needs this year. By the end of the day on Friday, I was sitting on the floor with my 5th graders....and we weren't anywhere near the rug. I just felt like I had to get them focused and I said, "I'm going to whisper the rest of this, so you better get to where you can hear me." The next thing I know, we are all sitting on the ground, and they seemed more excited that they just gathered in a group, than the fact that I was trying with all of my might to get them to understand why 5,412 is divisible by 2 and isn't by 3. After we continued discussing divisibility rules (where I learned that most of my 5th graders don't know the difference between even and odd numbers), we decided as a group that I would try to teach them some math on the rug, so they could focus better.

If there are any genius split teachers at your school, let me know because I want to find out how they provide the support during math that their students need.