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.

Order of Operations Bingo

First I need to give credit to the blog Math Equals Love, Ms. Hagan has been such an inspiration to me starting an interactive notebook in my classroom.  We used her printable for PEMDAS today and the kids really seemed to understand the left to right concept better in the visual organizer.  I will reference her materials tons this semester!  

Tomorrow we will be playing Order of Operations Bingo, I decided to add a bit of a twist to the lesson provided by NCTM.  I decided I would let the kids come up to the board and select a number to solve, then they would mark it out on their bingo card.  If anyone knows how to limit a hyperlink to one click, please let me know.  Originally I was going to use shapes instead of numbers for the hyperlinks, but I couldn't figure out how to make the shapes disappear.  If you have a smart-board let students toss a sock at the board to choose the next problem.  Unfortunately my kids have to use the pen, so I had a different number than the answer for each problem.  My first five kids to win bingo will receive 25 tickets to place in the drawing on Friday in hopes of getting one of the 4 homework passes.