Finally a Week Full
of Fun Activities!!!
This past week was our 3rd week with the
kiddos. My Accelerated Algebra 1 class
was taking their 2nd quiz of the unit this week, and my Algebra 1
On-level classes were heading for their first unit test. I was able to take advantage of a few review
days this week to do some engaging activities for assessment preparation.
On Tuesday, I used an activity from the team batch for the
inequalities quiz. This activity gave
compound inequality problems along with 3 different representations of the
solution that had to be matched up with each problem: interval notation, inequality w/union or
intersection notation, and the visual graph.
Because I had just got my laminator delivered, I was able to laminate
the game cards, so I was really excited.
On the bottom of each card was a letter, so when they put the solutions
together, it spelled a word – great way to check their answers, and they did
not catch on to that at all, which was something I anticipated. The activity was really engaging and
reinforced their understanding of the representing solutions rather than just
finding them. In grading their quizzes
later in the week, it was clear that this activity helped! The 2nd
activity I created and was intended to strengthen understanding of indicators
of inequality symbols in word problems.
This activity gave the students 6 inequality problem sets, and for each
one the students were asked to write a number sentence representing the
inequality, and then create a real-world situation to represent the
inequality. Because of time constraints,
I had them pick 4 out of the 6 inequalities.
There answers were really creative and fun on the real –world side of
it, and they rocked the number sentence portion; also, great discussions! What
they did not hesitate to say is that it was much harder to come up with the
problem than solve it; mission accomplished!
I told them that meant they were learning for the long termJ Activities in action and link for game are
below.
Wednesday in Algebra 1 after wrapping up radical
expressions, I gave a spiral review activity for Order of Operations. I would not realize until later in the week
while browsing Twitter and MTBoS that I had done a version of “Commit and
Capture”. I was excited to know that my
thinking and lesson creating is on track with awesome teachers in the MTBoS
community – it gave me a lot of energy.
Along with the commit and capture idea, I had them roll dice for numbers
to insert into the blanks, and they had to make every other number
negative. The last two problems on this
activity included division in the order of operations, so I asked them if their
number was an integer or rational to reinforce the number types subsets. If their number was rational because of the
division, I asked them to explore the original problem and see what numbers
could be changed to make the result an integer under the division
involved. That was an awesome piece – I thought I may
have pushed too far for on-level this early, but that was the part they focused
on the most! I am glad “Commit and Capture” for this
activity is already out there as I will continue to spiral it through. Below is the link to the activity I made.
On Thursday in Algebra 1 we had day 2 of review
activities. I used the “I Have Who Has”
Structure of Expressions activity from my team bank last year. I also was able to laminate and cut cards
this year, so the activity will keep better.
I had students deal out the cards and take turns telling their group
members what expression they had, and what term, factor, coefficient, or
constant they needed. They were to take
turns until everyone had found the elements they needed from their hand. I believe there were 2-3 leftover elements
that no card had, and when they found those, I knew they had the activity
completed. The awesome part of this
activity was hearing all the vocabulary for expressions flying around in the
room. As evidenced from the tests I have
graded so far, this activity brought the reinforcement of this concept to their
understanding that had been missing when they took the quiz. Pictures of the activity and the link for it
are below.
Also on Thursday was another attempt, although I now know
not the last, to help students classify number types. I developed a “Number Type Coloring Lab” for
students to create subset boxes for each number and represent the type the
number is a member of by certain colors.
At the end of the activity, I wanted the students to look at certain
color schemes for patterns. I asked them
what patterns they noticed. They still
struggled with it originally and referred to their notebooks (which of course I
want them to be able to do – that is why were keep themJ), but many are still
struggling with this concept after the test.
My search for activities for this topic will continue and of course
include the MTBoSJ Pictures of the activity and link are below.
The last activity I gave for Algebra 1 was a writing
expressions activity. The problems I
created had the students gathering information from clippings I got off the
internet and pasted. Some of it was hard
to read, so I encouraged them to use their Surface Pros to look up normal
pricing for similar things involved in the problems to determine a certain
price or amount. The Jet’s pizza problem
was the most challenging, and I let them know they may want to save that one
for last. Most groups required some
interaction from me with further prompts, but the enthusiasm to get through
that problem was definitely there, which made me happy. Of course, Jet’s is some damn good pizza in
our area, so that probably helped! Even
after the test, a lot of students still struggle with the ideas of tax as a
percentage off the price, but the process is getting better. I honestly think their age and lack of
experience paying for retail things has a lot to do with it. On parent night, it will give me something
to talk about with their kids when shopping.
Link for this activity below.
One last great thing from the planning side of things is
that I left Friday afternoon feeling like I could actually breathe and was
somewhat caught up. I had all of my
stuff crossed off the list, and things ready for Monday. I am not someone who likes making lists
because they overwhelm me at times, but my friend got me a list pad that is a
super fun way to make lists and want to cross off items. It is called a “crap pad”, and at the bottom
of the pad when I am done I can check off “All crapped out”, which is so silly,
but I love getting there and getting to say “yes! I am all crapped out”. Below is a list from this week complete with
some adding at the bottom from when I was trying to determine point value totals
for our Algebra 1 test this week.
All of these activities made the week so exciting from the
teaching aspect. I am at it again this
week for regular instruction this time pulling ideas from the CMP curriculum
for area and perimeter. I also have a
cool dimensional analysis activity my friend Deb gave me to help the Accel
Algebra students get ready for their test.
This week is a short one for us as our school has a professional day
Friday, and then the Labor Day weekend.
It is hard to believe that the end of this week already marks a month of
school!
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