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Spring Time Activity

  Between the warm weather, sun shining, and spring break approaching the students are ready to get outside.  You may have noticed that this time of year is harder for students to stay focused.  I find that activities help with this focus.  This is one activity which is easy to set up and complete. First, I have students write out the problems from a set on the board.  I show 75-100 problems on the board and they pick 8 to write on their paper.  Yes, you will have some duplicates but this saves times.  I have done a similar activity where I wrote out and cut out all of the problems and it took several days to set up.  Also, have the students cut out the problems and place them in the eggs.  I recommend having a basket or bin in your classroom to collect completed eggs. Next, you hid the eggs the next day for students.  I have clipboards in my room so students can grab a clipboard and we head outside.  They will find and solve 8 eggs.  Once they have completed an egg, they can hide the
Recent posts

Mistakes Review Day

  The norm in recent years seems to be that students feel they have to be perfect and get every question correct all of the time.  Trying to be perfect and never messing up seems to have led to very stressed students in the classroom.  What happens when they do make a mistake?  How do they react if they don't get a 100%? During the 2nd semester, I started going over the most missed questions as a class. Typically, I would make notes on the student's paper about the missed question.  I pulled up the questions and we discussed why it was missed, how you could get that wrong answer, and what we would do differently.  This may seem simple but it started to help students see that they weren't alone.  Second, it helps them analyze what happened to get the incorrect answer.  I believe this is just as important in the understanding process.  For example, with reflections we looked at the distractors of going over the wrong axis or writing an ordered pair as (y,x).   After reviewing

Teaching Reflections

  Teaching reflections can be a challenge for some students.  I found that pulling in the way you fold a paper from elementary school is helpful.  Check out the video below for tips.

Integer Rules Why?

  During the month of February, we started reviewing for our State test.  As we learned new concepts and reviewed previous ones we looked at why the rules work and how did they work. This took time, it time that many may say was a waste or could have been used elsewhere.    For struggling students or students who aren't great at memorizing this is very helpful. I find that in math students are told this is the rule and you need to learn it.  The reason behind the rule isn't explained or shown.  I've been challenging my students to ask questions, seek to know how or why it works, and not just believe something is true because I said it was.   This had led to great discussions.  For example, why does minus a negative change to a plus sign.  You've probably heard two negatives make a positive but why does it work.  We spent a day looking at why the integer rules work.  If they know the reason behind it, it helps as they are working out a problem or building on this skill. 

Teaching Volume

  Do your student ask when will I ever use this?  If you are getting ready to teach Volume, here's a great example.  The students will be excited to learn about how to possibly win this contest when they see it the next time. 

Gimkit Update

  My students have been asking to play a GimKit again.  I shared with them, that's it's hard to make math problems look right on many of the game based websites.    GimKit has added a new equation feature about 2 weeks ago which makes adding equations and other types of problems super easy.  If typing the math is the reason that you haven't been using GimKit, I recommend giving it a try again. 

Writing the Equation of a Line

This is a part of a set of task cards for writing the equation of a line.  This was made for Math 7 students and advanced Math 6 students.  The y-intercept is 0 for each of the tables.  Writing the Equation of a Line From a Table