Thursday, September 26, 2013
Solving Equations Flow Chart Foldable
I made this today. Pretty cool, I think. My students in Geometry A don't have any idea where to start when solving an equation. It seems like all they've seen are one-step equations. *sigh* I wasted 50 copies printing this out for them to glue in their notebooks. Hopefully it will be worth it.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
"We've come a long way!"
One of my Geometry A students said that to me today. We did 3 pages about slope today in class. We have completed 27 pages so far. Their notebooks look awesome. I am thrilled when they are working independently and instead of asking for help, they flip back in their notebooks! That's a Proud-Teacher moment.
My algebra students are less thrilled with their notebooks. Yesterday I assigned 6 graphing quadratic functions problems. They had the whole class to finish them. I could NOT convince some of them to look in their notebook. They insisted on trying remember all the steps instead of following along with the examples in the notebook (I think we did 7 pages worth.) WHY? I kept asking them. Why waste brain power trying to remember something you can look up! Most of these gave up before the end of class, content to let me take off points. They got frustrated because they couldn't remember it all. Teenagers...
My algebra students are less thrilled with their notebooks. Yesterday I assigned 6 graphing quadratic functions problems. They had the whole class to finish them. I could NOT convince some of them to look in their notebook. They insisted on trying remember all the steps instead of following along with the examples in the notebook (I think we did 7 pages worth.) WHY? I kept asking them. Why waste brain power trying to remember something you can look up! Most of these gave up before the end of class, content to let me take off points. They got frustrated because they couldn't remember it all. Teenagers...
Friday, September 13, 2013
Parallel, intersecting, skew... Winning!!!
This lesson was AWESOME (except for an unfortunate incident when a student "accidentally" said screw instead of skew...)
My students always struggled with this. The diagrams are hard to understand. It was difficult to tell whether they were struggling with naming the line or understanding the concept. I wasn't very good at explaining it, I guess. I held a big box, I waved my arms around... they didn't get it.
This worked.
:)
We made a little box out of paper and glued it into the notebooks. Then we smooshed it flat so that the notebooks would close. (They were really cute when they asked, "But how will the notebook close?" like I hadn't thought of that...) We made a little loop of paper to hold 3 coffee stirrers. I got the colored kind. I would call out two letters and they would hold one straw on the line. Then I'd call out two more and they would hold the other straw on that line. Then we would discuss the relationship. For the first time EVER my kids understood. They didn't get why I was so flippin' happy at the end of class. They're all, "What's the big deal. This is easy."
My students always struggled with this. The diagrams are hard to understand. It was difficult to tell whether they were struggling with naming the line or understanding the concept. I wasn't very good at explaining it, I guess. I held a big box, I waved my arms around... they didn't get it.
This worked.
:)
We made a little box out of paper and glued it into the notebooks. Then we smooshed it flat so that the notebooks would close. (They were really cute when they asked, "But how will the notebook close?" like I hadn't thought of that...) We made a little loop of paper to hold 3 coffee stirrers. I got the colored kind. I would call out two letters and they would hold one straw on the line. Then I'd call out two more and they would hold the other straw on that line. Then we would discuss the relationship. For the first time EVER my kids understood. They didn't get why I was so flippin' happy at the end of class. They're all, "What's the big deal. This is easy."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)