Practice with a Raffle

Yesterday, my pre-algebra peeps learned to factor monomials. As much as the term "skill, drill, kill" (is that what it is?) is not often deemed good math teaching, I do believe there is a place for it in the math classroom. Factoring monomials is one of those skills that students just need to be able to do. Quickly. Automatically.

Idea: To make the day more fun than a worksheet, I took a couple of worksheets (one from Kuta, obviously) and made a few copies. Then I cut each question out so it was on its own slip of paper. I had two stacks at the front of the room. Students factored the monomials, wrote their name on the back, and put it in the box. At the end of class, I would draw a name from the box and as long as the answer was correct, that student would win a Werther's Original!

My students were very into it! Of course, I was walking around checking for understanding and correcting any mistakes I saw. It was good to see a healthy, competitive side to them again. Sometimes trashketball gets a bit heated. I am DEFINITELY going to do this again.

Conceptual Teaching and Learning of Math

Ramblings: When I was a wee undergraduate student, I was a research assistant to a math education professor. My thesis had a title with words like "novel," "linear relationship," and "student thinking."Basically, for a year I was immersed into the idea that conceptual understanding is paramount in math education. And I totally drank the Kool-Aid. A professional goal I set for myself most ears is to try and incorporate as much conceptual understanding into each lesson as possible. However, with district and state tests, sometimes it can be very overwhelming to teach students conceptual understanding, make sure that develops into fluency, ensure students able to apply said concepts to new situations, and teach test-taking strategies. It is so exhausting. Huh, I just realized this whole spiel wasn't even related to what I wanted to post about: an excellent problem I did with 3rd grade. I guess I just needed to vent! Here begins my real post:

Last week, I started reading Principal Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All, which is a National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) publication. Of course they promote this conceptual understanding of mathematics and encourage giving students real-world scenarios, letting them experience a "productive struggle," work collaboratively and solve the problem in many ways. I gave my 3rd graders the following problem from the book:

There's going to be a talent show and the principal wants to set up 7 rows with 20 chairs in each row, and possibly an aisle down the middle for people to walk. How many chairs should she order to be pulled out of storage? 

I didn't print this out and give this to them on a worksheet. I had a small group of 3 students (of similar ability levels) and gave them the question verbally. They were to tell me how they thought they could solve it before they started to write it on individual whiteboards. I was SO impressed with what they came up with. Between the three of them, they were able to represent the situation with a picture, counting by 10s, counting by 20s, and with a multiplication equation. It even concluded with two of the students representing the solution in various ways after I kept questioning.

This activity reminded me that it is not too difficult to incorporate conceptual-based tasks into your day. This one was about 10-15 minutes and it let me spend time with 3 students while the rest were on computers working independently on subtraction fluency. The students enjoyed this, and I can't wait for Monday to pull a new group of 3 students to see how they wow me.

Happy weekend!

Disclaimer (not sure if I need one or not): I am NOT affiliated in any way with NCTM. I just enjoy reading the book and have learned a lot!

Trashketball Review

I was a cool teacher today. That's so rare I need to bask in the success! We played a fiercely competitive game of Trashketball today to review exponents and powers.

Trashketball ensures that all students are involved in solving every problem and encourages students to talk with members of their group. Champions win my praises and a Werther's Original candy.

Trashketball only requires prepared review questions and that's it! The rules of trashketball are simple.

1. 1. Every student has an individual whiteboard and marker and are expected to answer each question on said whiteboard. 
2. I have two cups containing sticks with the names of each student. One cup of name sticks per team.
3. I show a question and students have 30-45 seconds to answer. They may discuss with other members of their team. 
4. I call for "time" and draw a stick to select a student. They must show me their board with their answer for 3 points.
5. If they answer correctly, they earn their 3 points and are allowed to shoot the paper ball into a basket from a predetermined "close" distance for 2 points, or from across the room for 5 points. 
6. If they do not answer correctly, the other team has an opportunity to answer - thus holding every student accountable for solving the problem. Whoever gets the answer correctly would have the opportunity to win the bonus points by shooting the paper ball.

Rules I display on the front:

*Everyone MUST write answers down on their whiteboard
*Only two attempts to earn extra points
       Scoring Guide
Correct answer - 3 points
Made basket from designated (close-ish) desk - 2 points
Bonus shot from across the room - 5 points

I introduced Trashketball to my students to help them review powers and exponents. They learned to convert expressions between expanded and exponential form and to evaluate expressions with exponents for a given value. You can see the presentation I used (with questions and warm-up) here if you're interested! 

Slope-Intercept Form Scavenger Hunt

I spent hours creating the perfect scavenger hunt today, including an answer recording sheet and answer key for me with symbols to easily check for understanding.

A few issues:

1. I messed up one of my answers, which is a big mistake when making scavenger hunts.
2. I forgot to print out said beautiful answer key for my easy check for understanding.
3. When I tried to pull up the answer key on my phone, the images wouldn't appear.

So, I have since fixed all of these issues! The answers are correct! The file is a PDF so all symbols will show up on any device! Phew. Nonetheless, my students were still able to go through this review activity at their own pace and I was able to help students individually and see pretty quickly where they were getting stuck. I am definitely going to return to this again next year.

If you're interested, here she is!

Which One Doesn't Belong?

I found a new website and I fell in love with it! Found it last night whilst scrolling through teacher Instagrams and tried it out today. It's called Which One Doesn't Belong?

You HAVE to visit it. Here. It has a variety of figures and it can be used to encourage talking about mathematics in the classroom. Initially, I was thinking it would be an excellent warm-up for my high schoolers, just to get them thinking and comfortable since there are no right or wrong answers. Then today, I was working one-on-one with one of my 1st grade ELL students and I thought I should show him this. He was very interested. I showed him the following image from the website:



I asked him "Which one is different?" and it took him some time to realize there wasn't a right or wrong answer. We went through each box and he said how each one was "different."
The 1st graders responses, roughly translated:
Top left - upside-down
Top right - not a triangle
bottom left - slanted
bottom right - looks like a ramp

How amazing is that?? What an excellent discussion! Then he was ready for more. He really wanted a numbers one, so we did this next:

Responses:
Top left - 3 digits
top right - only box with a 6 in it
bottom left - only one digit
bottom right - if you had the digits together, you get 10.

I thought I was dreaming when my student then asked how we could add 73 and 16. Umm, you want to learn how to do double-digit addition because of mere curiosity? Absolutely, let's learn! And that's how my day started. It was very nice and I'll definitely return to this website for many years.

My Ramblings and a Linear Toothpick Activity

For those of you who don't know (which so far is nobody because only my husband reads this, hi Honey!), I teach a second block of Pre-Algebra for freshmen in high school. I don't do the fun stuff this year of assigning homework, PLC meetings, PDs, or assigning grades, but I do get to come up with creative ways for students to further interact with the material they are learning in their first math block.

Last week, they started working with functions. Which is nice because if I spent one more second going over converting between fractions, decimals, and percents, I was going to lose my mind. But I can get on board with some functions. Or rather, put the FUN in FUNctions. I like teaching students how to determine if a relation is a function. And then, oh so swiftly, the class moved on to... linear functions! But not using function notation and calling them linear equations right after learning about functions. One day, I'll get more education and try to change the way teachers talk about math in the classroom. For now, I will show you pictures of toothpicks lined up in patterns:

 I created a worksheet where they had to record in a table how many toothpicks it required to make a square (4) and then how many toothpicks it takes to create each square after that (3). So the rate of change, or slope, is three! For every three toothpicks that are used in the pattern, one additional square is formed.

Then of course I included some independent practice problems of real-world situations where students had to fill out a given table. Just your typical gym membership and cell phone plan-type situations.

Here's the link if you want to use my activity!

Sidewalk Task Day

Some days kids are tough. One of my made-up strategies for classroom management (but definitely not backed by any research) is to stand at the front of the class with a piece of paper and pen and write down my observations if students are not behaving in a way that is conducive to classroom learning. For example, if Johnny is yelling "this pencil is so thick!" while Susie is laying across desks she strung together, I tend to stop instruction and take notes. The best part is the kids know I'm up to something, but they aren't exactly sure what. Most times, I am making notes so I have exact quotes and actions documented in case there needs to be a parent phone call. Sometimes, I'm drawing pictures of flowers and writing my name in cursive. But they don't know that.

Today started off like this. As I had hoped, my apparent note-taking did not sit right with the kids, so they soon became attentive and ready for directions. It was one of my top three favorite days of the year (though I may claim that more than three times in one year)... the Sidewalk Task!

It is a beautiful math task (found here) requiring that kids actually use their brains to recognize patterns. I had students focused for over 30 minutes, actively engaged and trying to problem-solve. Even after the bell rang for dismissal, I had a student saying "Miss! Miss! Is this right?" Which, of course, I responded with an "I don't know. Is it right?" and so he tried to explain his thinking to me. AFTER THE DISMISSAL BELL. All students were thinking mathematically and even enjoyed the challenge! Days, or even moments, like this make teaching so totally worth it.

I became a game show host and the kids learned about calculating standard deviation

Is it lame to post twice in one day? Probably. But I still have energy and zest so I'm at it again! I was feeling nostalgic for my being-in-the-classroom-to-teach-math days so I wanted to share one of my proud, creative moments. I combined the game show Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader with... calculating standard deviation! Months later, the echos of the Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader day still reverberated through the halls. Ha. Not really, but I did keep the interest of a class full of freshmen for about 30 minutes which is also an accomplishment.

Here's what I did:

1. Had students complete an Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader quiz of about 20 questions as a silent warm-up.

2. I read the answers aloud and students self-graded and wrote their total correct at the bottom of their paper.

3. I'm very proud of this one - Used a random name generator to call on 10 students (perfectly tied in to unbiased sampling, which we had just learned about) and had them share their scores with the class.

4. We all wrote down their scores as a class.

5. I then provided the students with a scaffolded worksheet on how to calculate the standard deviation of a sample by hand.

6. Students did practice problems.

7. Showed students how to do it in five seconds on their calculator.

8. Tuned out the complains of angry students for not telling them the "shortcut" sooner.

9. Basked in the glory of my successful lesson.

Here's the activity if you want a better look!

The Magic of "I have/Who has?"

High School Math is my jam. I'm comfortable with it. I studied it in college. Some might even say I'm not bad at it! However, this year I deviated and am at an elementary school with a seriously misleading title of "Instructional Specialist." Some of my new responsibilities include testing coordinator, computer lab dweller, teaching English to ELLs, and 3rd grade math and reading interventionist (but not at the same time). I have been immersed in a world of "bubble mouths," sight words, and place value charts.

My 3rd grade reading intervention group is working on the first 100 sight words, so I stumbled across an "I have/Who has" game. I fell in love! So of course I had to make my own. And they had to have a theme. And that theme was dinosaurs. I was both pleased and surprised that my students were suddenly so interested in sight word practice. Naturally, I had to make a contest out of it. If they could get through the chain of 24 words in under a minute and 30 seconds, I would bring them in a treat. After three weeks, they have succeeded!

The pro: They want cupcakes so I get to have cupcakes on Friday!
The con: They want cupcakes so I have to frantically make my way to the Walmart Bakery on Friday at 8:07 am.

Here is a low-quality picture of a few of my cards I made... AND LAMINATED!

For those of you unaware, here is a summary of "I have/Who has?"

1. Each student gets a card. I had a small group so in my case, each student got six cards.
2. Someone has the "beginning" card, so cleverly labeled "start here!"
3. They read the card, which then ends with "who has..." and then a word.
4. All students listen to see if they have their word. The student who does have the word reads their card.
5. This chain continues until the end card, which reads something along the lines of "the end."
6. Copious amounts of learning occur.

My stint in an elementary school is over halfway over, but I'm excited to bring this sort of practice into an Algebra class next year!

And you can download these cards here for your own personal collection!

Wishing a happy rest of the week to everybody!