Beginning of the year review

We know as math teachers this is a vital time in our classroom.  To have an effective school year, we need to know the strengths and weaknesses of our students.  I always begin my school year without calculators.  I know insert the shock face here.  But I need to know how many of the basics are my students missing.  I have seniors that still don't know how to add and subtract integers.  I will be addressing how I hope to use my one-to-one classroom to help these students out in my class in a later blog.  So what do I review with my intermediate Algebra 1 students?

Identifying Real Numbers

I begin the notes with Math = Love's Real number chart.  I like it better than the circles, for some reason my kids get it better this way.  Then we move into the matching activity in class.  I use the one from the State of Virginia, but there is another on TpT in Jean Adams page.  From here we do a sorting worksheet for homework and some of the graphing from the sheet for classwork.  The next day we review and we then take a short quiz.

Adding Integers

Most students struggle with this at the high school when they come to us from the middle school.  I really make this my goal to make these rules stick.  I make plus/minus tiles as a manipulative.  The picture below shows an example of -3 + 5.  By lining up the ones that cancel out, it is easy for students to see the answers.  I also use the "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" song for integers.

Excited about tomorrow

Tomorrow we will be graphing quadratics. First, they will factor to find the x-intercepts. Next, we will be practice finding the vertex. The final round will require students to graph the vertex and 2 points to the left and right of the vertex.   This one may be tricky, but the goal is to simultaneously have students graph out 2 different equations causing the relay to become interesting. I may go back to the fly swatter if it becomes too hectic. Also, I am keeping this short because I have been baking for them post parent teacher conferences. Good night. 

Quadrilaterals part 2 (Tons of links to amazing quadrilateral resources)

We just finished the quadrilateral unit and my student that rarely does anything made a 72!  Whoa!  I mean we cannot discuss the child's average, but let's just state that if grades were like golf scores, this kid would be killing it.  First, I started with the coloring quadrilateral notes from Math Giraffe.  Go sign-up as a follower on her site and you get the doodle notes for free!  Umm, yes please.  Site link here.


I also paid a few bucks for her coloring quads always, sometimes, never sheet.  Again, anytime that is coloring, my kids are down.  You can find the link to her store here.

We went on to a classifying activity and most of them knocked it out of the park.  I threw in a quiz that day on kahoot!  If you have never used Kahoot and you have wifi capable tools in your class, sign up!  The kids again, loved it!  This whole week was a success lesson wise, if only they were always like that.

Then, as a summary activity we did the bulletin board, found here.  I put the kids in groups with giant pieces of bulletin board paper and they worked in teams of 4 putting it together.  I made sure I checked it prior to gluing, but a few did it prior to me checking.  They only had a few errors, which show that the properties were mastered.  We finished up with Kahoot, once more checking to see if they could solve for the missing angle measure.





Study guide and test day were a breeze, thanks to all the wonderful resources available.

Pi Day

think I am posting more today just because I have so much to share from 3-14 onward. First and foremost, I took an amazing resource, shrank it down in size and used it for pi day.  Annie made an amazing resource for pi day.

I only got the fist 65 pages colored with my freshmen, but what a great testament to the patience that math requires. Comments such as "Whoa that is 6500 colored spaces!?", "I found mine", and "that is a long number" I think gave students a better understanding of the number pi, mathematics, and possibly a better grasp of how unimaginable infinity is as a mathematical term.  Even my panoramic shot couldn't capture the whole thing. Honestly, if you haven't taught figures like circles yet, this is a great activity. So check out her website here. 

Hook for Transformations: Desmos

First, let me warn you that these challenges are super consuming and you will lose an entire class period.  Desmos.com was a happy accidental find on twitter and I am now hooked!  A way to teach transformations and to make students allow room for error.  There were a few that I will admit I gave up on in the middle of trying to find the answer, so I do recommend going through them all and then assigning a few for a class.  This is super fun!  I could see my students discussing what they did to arrive to their answer and hopefully being able to take the adjustments and creating postulates for math.  I love any time my students get sucked into an activity.  This is why I have opened up a donorschoose page for fire tablets this time.  In hopes to bring technology into my classroom for activities like this.  I need to explore some more, but I encourage you to do the same and share your experiences.  Best part...it is free!  So explore away. 

Systems using elimination

Let me just say, wow!  The Internet is amazing!  I posted that silly donors choose video and bam I have classroom supplies coming straight to my door.  The blog had taken to the back burner, but I am back with a few posts.  I am going to do two today, the first for my Algebra class, the second for math tech 3/geometry.

I find that substitution is a difficult method to follow out of the three.  Unless you are a math nerd like I was in high school and had plenty of experience with math relays.  So finally, we come to elimination!  I think out of the three forms, minus the calculator for graphing, that this is the easiest form to solve for students.  I showed the students how to find the lcm in the calculator (a trick I didn't learn until I went back to school for my master's degree).  Go to ALPHA then over to the right to NUM and voila!  This menu can factor using the gcd, find the lcm, and plug the absolute value into your calculator.  I mean really, why did I not know about this?!

So after teaching the method, I used these worksheets from online.  There was one error on the substitution package, but the elimination seemed to be perfect.  I had students do the cut out activity as the students homework after the notes were taken.  I love this packet because it breaks the material down into steps.  The second can be used as a gallery style activity (the way I presented it) or as a matching activity.  I loved it!  The kids seems to really catch on using elimination.  I heard a few complaints from them about the number of steps needed to solve the equations.  We are playing a review game and quizzing on the three methods prior to teaching them how to just use a matrix.  Man do kids always get mad.  "Mrs. P, why did you make us do the other forms?  The matrix is soooo easy."

Note: there are limits to using the lcm or the gcd...you can only plug in two numbers and you must keep them positive.

Geometry Vocabulary

Today we just worked through more word problems, so I figured I would pull out one from the archive. I taught geometry two years ago and decided we needed to cover formulas and definitions for the upcoming final. Each child was provided an 8.5 by 8.5 inch square. Each child was assigned a word that needed an example or picture on white paper and colored paper for an assigned formula. We did vocab speed dating so each child had presented their term to their classmate. The kids seemed to learn a lot and the added perk was that I had a pretty review poster for my classroom. 

Snow catch up part two

So today my kids were foldable overloaded. We had to make up for four lost days of curriculum.

First, we started with a two step refresher  foldable. The kids solved two step equations on the inside and explained in their own words how they arrived at their answer. 

Next, I found an awesome foldable online on teachers pay teachers. I think it is by far the best step by step foldable I have seen yet. 

Then, we worked out a few problems using the foldable. This led to the discussion of when the coefficient in front of the variable is the same. 

Finally, we concluded with their homework, which originally would have been a classroom assignment. Four no solution, four all real number equations, and four with a solution. They had to solve each to determine which pocket to place the slips into.