Practicum Day 4

Towards the end of a week; tomorrow is a "teacher only day" - which is for prof development etc which I will attend and reflect on but for now...

The stand out today was a volunteer to supervise three students who refuse to do any work.
They had a work-sheet on manipulating fractions, which produced a lot of resistance until they realized their calculators could handle fractions. School policy is that students should use technology to solve problems. So the exercise (not set by me, or anybody present) was defeated.

As a content area, is fractions even a thing now? Seems to me it is like times tables after 4-function calculators became common. Students need to know what fractions are and the basics of the manipulation. Perhaps fractions have become a kind of notation for algebra and the standard division symbol should be depreciated?

Y9 Science class has the widest range of ability possible. Todays class was computer based and ope ended: make a 4min presentation for Y7 science on "How does light work?" which managed to cater for all levels nicely. This was via google classroom. I noticed a gender divide in organization: girls laid out their presentation first while the boys looked for information, but were reluctant to produce anything.

The school has strong ITC integration and most students have smartphones and access to laptops.