I am a sucker for any lesson Sarah Hagan. Everything she does is gold. I ran across a post when I was looking for
point-slope form that she did. You can find it here: http://mathequalslove.blogspot.com/2015/02/rolling-dice-for-point-slope-form-and.html
I decided I would tweek it a little and give it a go. My
kids just started slope and graphing and now I feel like they are almost done with
it and didn’t get enough practice. I tried it with my 9th grade
Algebra 1 kids first and it went wonderful. I only have 8 students and 2 were
out sick. They could choose to stand or sit which really made them feel like
they had choices and they were pretty excited about that. They then rolled the dice which created either
an equation or two sets of coordinates. I then had instruction on the board for
what they were to do with the points they rolled.
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Obviously it wasn’t anything fancy
but it got them moving from one equation to the next and got them to discuss
what steps were needed to get to the step asked for.
Since it was their own numbers they rolled it got
them excited and they were all discussing as a group, solving and asking questions
to each other. They were helping each other problem shoot to get where they
needed to go. They encouraged one another. They were working great together and
higher level critical thinking is a struggle sometimes for them but they were doing so well! For
my 8th grade Algebra 1 class I have 17 students. We formed a huge
circle and did the same thing as before. This time they only discussed with the
2 or 3 people surrounding them. It worked well and they had a blast but were a
little too loud.
Things I would change:
For the bigger class next time I
would split them all up into groups of 4,5,or 6. This way they can interact and
discuss with a group.
Make a powerpoint that had what they were going to do on different
slides, so that they focus on one goal at a time. This would keep them all on
the same page until I made sure they all had it before we moved on. Instead I
jumped around on the last page so they didn’t know what to do next and would
wait until I gave further instructions.
Good Things
They were really engaged in the review. I think it was
good for them to move from one equation to the next and figure out which
equation would be best for what information was given.
They really loved the big dice. I was able to find 4 from
the primary teachers.
Just a new set up of desks really spurred on discussion and
added to the excitement
Engaging and we could have gone on forever changing and
molding the equations. I wish my classes were longer so we could have graphed
more or drawn equations from a graph already drawn
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