Where is My Class?

As an educator, especially a secondary teacher of upper class students, I often wonder what has happened to my class. I make phone calls for those who are starting the habit, but recently I have noticed a trend on test days. 

So what do you do?  Well, we did a poster project to reward those who were doing what they are supposed to do. But using the time to review for those who may have missed a concept or two. 

Require students to write their own definition instead of using the book. Have students make up there own examples, but allow them to use problems from their previous class work. 

Give extra points for the overall look of the poster. My students were engaged, but those who typically give up do the posters. What?  We learned something today and I have free art work for the classroom. 

System of Inequalities quilt part 1

These were my two examples for my quiz today. Monday, I will take a picture of the final product along with a link to the activity.   This week, we pushed forward on graphing systems of inequalities and they finally got it. At least the majority did. So instead of a test or quiz, we did a scrapbook inequality project. Man, it was a blast!  I was thrilled in how most caught on after doing one together. It was easy to grade and now I have beautiful artwork for my classroom!

Geometry: All things Parallel, with a transversal

Okay, while I enjoy teaching Algebra 1 my favorite class is geometry.  I cannot state this enough.  This includes all of my activities, notes, and games I use teaching parallel lines.  My students have have really impressed me with the projects and even the game (considering the lack of enthusiasm for the study guide, go figure).

Let's begin with the notes.  I always have students shade in the acute angles one color and the obtuse another color.  Then, we put that the angles that are the same color = each other and the opposite colors = 180.  This really helps drive home the main two concepts.  Then, we discuss the interior vs. exteriors.  I hint that same-side starts with an S and so does supplementary.  Trying to help them recall the terms as well.  The foldable helps them organize the congruent angle relationships compared to the supplementary.

We do a little practice on worksheets, playing review games to get the answers.  On to the first project!  Design your own city.  I love this project, because I get to go over my previous profession in architecture and review urban design.  I show them images from my portfolio of how they could one day take this project to design cities.  Ya know, get them as excited as I am about the project.  I get to even throw in a mini lesson about scale. You can find the rubric I used here.  This was not my activity, but I loved the rubric and why re-create the wheel?

Review. Practice.  Time for the review game!  I didn't want my students that would be all so tempted to keep my real dice, so I had them cut out a template out of paper for the next activity.  I had played one similar to this activity before, but this one seemed to work out great.  Again, why re-create the wheel?  My kids surprised me in how engaged they were.  They had the terminology down!  We shall see how they do on the test, but right now I am pleased as punch.

Solving for the variable patchwork quilt

This idea is a twist from my previous school.  We talked about how we could display solving for a variable in a project or a creative manner.  The problem is that kids in 9th grade who just were introduced to variables are now having to solve with only variables.  They don't realize that this will definitely help them in geometry and other future math courses.

First cut tons of paper squares!  I make mine 4.25 inches by 4.25, mostly because it only requires three cuts with an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper.  The put the math work on the colored sheet of paper and the verbal explanation on the white sheets of paper.  Then, they put the grid together.  The beauty of it is that you can give smaller equations to lower level students and more multi-step equations to higher level students so that the final product comes together in a pretty multi-colored quilt.

Hello Kitty graph and a new website

New teacher blog to check out.  Mrs. Hoppe has awesome activities for students to work on from algebra tiles to review games to projects on graphing.  She has awesome ideas that I hope to infuse into my class this year.  You can link to her blog here.

My kids will be graphing soon so after their test yesterday on inequalities, they worked on a graphing activity from Mrs. Hoppe's website.  It turns out to be Hello Kitty so it is super cute, but they also showed me if they could graph or not.