Puzzle builder

I had forgotten about this program until searching on pinterest for algebra 1 activities.  This was a great activity you can use for any topic and any subject.  I plan on changing it a bit because some of my lower level students may have needed part of the puzzle to be solved for them.  Basically, you choose the number of questions you want to be solved based on the puzzle.  Then, you type the question and solution into the input category.  It produces a table of the questions and answers, along with a key for the puzzle.  Awesome activity.  I was able to walk around the classroom more today, than on others.  Tarsia is the name of the program and it is a free download!

Multi-Step activity

So my students will need tons of practice on this section.  Previous to our quiz today, I had the students walk around the class and answer each question of the set of 8.  Once they have solve a problem, they find the card matching the solution.  They should complete all 8 problems.  If they didn't solve all 8, then they need to revisit their work.  If they can't find their answer, they need to revisit their work.

I send them in groups of three or four depending on the size of the class, so there isn't a pile up.  If class all end up at the same equation, I may sit them down in groups and allow them a "runner" to get the next equation.  I'll post an update on it later today, since I didn't share any goodies yesterday.

Oragmi Envelopes might be cool, but never again!

We're still reviewing since the kids took a pre-assessment for my class and bombed it!  The kids are truly coming to me at a low level.  I wanted the check for an understanding of 8th grade math skills.  I chose easy to difficult level problems.  The students did well on order of operations since I had already covered this topic in our review, but other areas were poor. 

Today in response to the scores, we reviewed adding integers today.  We used algebra tiles that the kids cut out from card-stock.  We used them with a worksheet from Cooperative Learning & Algebra 1 by Becky Bride.  It's a great resource to have in any Algebra class.  

We then followed the oragami envelope steps, but it did take more time than usual.  I figured with Valentine's day coming up it would be neat for them to learn, plus it holds all of their algebra tiles in something they created.  We also used a foldable and blank number lines for our notes today.  Overall, they grasped the concept and we can move on to the next issue on the assessment.