Hi everyone, I'm back! I have never been away from my blog for this long and I've missed writing so much. My last post was on August 20th and I try to write at least every other week which obviously hasn't been happening. The reason I've been gone is because I have a new prep which includes a new computer program that I needed to learn. Well, I finally feel like I am getting a handle on everything so I now have a little time to blog. There are 57 posts in my drafts box and I have so much to share:) My 8th grade Pre-Algebra classes are on an endless journey to learn everything they ever wanted to know about exponents. Right now we are learning how to solve multiplication and division problems written in Scientific Notation. I didn't have any luck finding foldables on this topic so I made my own. (I always like mine best anyway.) Here is the foldable I created for our Interactive Notebooks.
This was actually put together at midnight the day before I taught this lesson so the left side could be changed next year. I do tend to procrastinate sometimes.
The foldable turned out to be the perfect size for our composition notebooks. Love it!
Don't let the division tab confuse you. It is the tab for the next section even though multiplication problems are written on this page. You can always cut it off because there is another division tab underneath. I became frustrated trying to get everything to line up so I just left the tab.
Sorry, there's a grammatical error here. It should say only thenumbers are divided. Overall, I like how the foldable turned out. Hope you do too.
Here is another post that has been in my drafts since March. Oh my! Thank goodness I have summer to sit down and share these with you. Enjoy:) This was the first time I have taught slope triangles. Actually, and don't judge me, I've never given them any time in my curriculum. That changed this year as I decided to spend several days working with them in my Pre-Algebra 8th grade classes. We started our unit with Fawn Nguyen's awesome lesson using staircases to begin our discussion of slope. I know that Fawn used this with her 6th graders but it was appropriate to use with my Pre-Algebra classes. Here is the link toFawn's first of two postson this activity. Fawn goes into great detail explaining the questioning and student interaction. Take time to read her posts, they are awesome. Thanks Fawn! My students completed the worksheet in one class period. I'm hoping that next year we will spend more time with our discussions. I love the video that Fawn shared from the Utah Avalanche Center discussing the slope of hills and avalanches. We showed this at the beginning of class the next day.
Next we did an interactive notebook page on counting to find slope.
We drew slope triangles and labeled them.
Then they did the INB page below with their partners.
I probably should have added a vertical line on this page as well.
There were a few other activities that I will share in a later post.
Of course we watched Colin Dodds Slope video.
The kids love his songs and so do I!
It was worth spending this amount of time on slope triangles. It gave the students an added visual for finding slope that I know many of them need. I was happy with how much the slope triangles helped my struggling students. When they would hear the words slope triangle they knew exactly what they needed to do.
My 8th grade Pre-Algebra students have been working on our Pythagorean Theorem unit for a couple of weeks. Today when the kids walked into the room I turned on this short video byColin Dodds. Itold them to pay attention to the vocabulary in the song because they would be using it in today's lesson. We have been using this vocabulary all along but this gave great visuals as well as music to help them remember the words. I did add my input when the song said the two other sides, I asked, "What is the vocabulary word for those two other sides? The kids love all of Colin Dodds' songs.
Robert Kaplinsky has an amazing site and if you haven't seen it before you are in for a treat. One of the lessons that he has listed for the 8th grade Pythagorean Theorem Standard is, "How can we correct the Scarecrow?," from theWizard of Oz. I asked the kids how many of them had seen the movie. Only about half of my students had seen it. WHAT!!! I was shocked. Of course, they all wanted to watch it right then and there but no - not today. So we talked about the Scarecrow and how he gets his brain and tries to recite the Pythagorean Theorem but gets it mixed up. As I have told you before the majority of my students speak another language so I knew I would need a visual on this part of the lesson. I made a template for them to fill for this activity so they had a little direction. (The download is at the end of this post.)
We watched the Scarecrow and together wrote down what he said. It took about 4 times repeating the video to get the whole statement. Working in their groups the students needed to find the Scarecrow's mistakes, write them down, and correct what was wrong. I told them that I found 5 mistakes and challenged them to find them all. Believe it or not, you could hear crickets in the room (that means it was really quiet for my second language friends). They looked at me with big eyes as I walked around waiting for me to tell them the answer. Nope, that is not happening.
Me: "What is something that the Scarecrow said that was wrong?" Luckily the isosceles triangle was one that they could see right away so that gave them some encouragement. After a few minutes I heard isosceles triangle, hypotenuse, legs and so on. I told them I like the math vocabulary I was hearing.
After they found the mistakes they were to write down what the Scarecrow should have actually said.
Me: " No you cannot write a2 + b2
= c2. You need to write a statement using the math vocabulary we have learned in this unit." There was a lot of groaning at this point from many of them.
Here are some examples of the students work. Sorry if it is hard to read, they use mechanical pencils are light and difficult to read.
When the kids wrote down the quote from the scarecrow, I didn't write it, I only repeated it. Being a math person I just assumed that the students would know he was talking about "the sum of the square roots" not, "some of the square roots." I clarified that with my other two classes. I think that hypotenuse and hypothesis from science became a new word here. You will see how my kids struggled using the correct vocabulary for this activity.
So many students thought that some was a mistake and that sum was the correction. I think next year I will write out with them what the Scarecrow actually said.
We have been using the words squared and square roots all year. How can they not understand the difference? I had no idea this was an issue for so many of them.
Almost correct.
At the very beginning of the video clip the Wizard says he has his Thd, Doctor of Thinkology Degree. Many of the kids didn't understand the reference and believed it was a mistake and should be Phd. That was not something I thought about but it made sense.
The template I created was taken from one we used in the past for the extended response problems that were part of our state testing. It was called a 4 square template. The top left box is where the students would write, What I know. The bottom left was where they would show their Work, the bottom right is where they would Explain their work and the top right box would say, My answer is ... and they would circle their answer. It was a good template but we can't use it anymore because the students need to write their responses in paragraph form. Too bad, it was a great tool for them and I do use it for lessons like this.
We used the entire 45 minute period to do this lesson. One of my classes had to watch Colin Dodds video and extra 3 times to listen and look at the vocabulary again.
Another class was able to finish so I collected the paper and found "my favorite no." The next day I went over "my favorite no" with the other two classes as well. I use this quite a bit in my classroom. Watch the video from the Teaching Channel which explains "my favorite no" better than I ever could. I do believe they understood the difference between when to write squared or square root when we went over the favorite no's.
Last year I tried this lesson by just watching the video and it was confusing for my students. Having the kids write down what the Scarecrow said and doing this activity at the end of the Pythagorean Theorem Unit made a big difference over last year. There was still confusion on the difference between the vocabulary words square root and squaring a number. They knew the difference between the computations but not the words. I think having to struggle rewriting what the Scarecrow should have said was a great learning experience for them. I had fun watching them when they started finding the mistakes and how they were interacting in their groups. They did a great job. It was a GOOD DAY and you have to sit back and enjoy that when those days happen. I'm smiling.
Right now my 8th grade pre-algebra classes are working through our unit on transformations. Rotations have proved to be a difficult concept for them to grasp so I started searching blogs looking for ideas. I was inspired by a table in a foldable that Nancy at geometry gems had on her site. I knew I wanted to create that table for my students to place in their interactive notebooks as quick reference on how to graph rotations. We started with a pre-image in the first quadrant so they could easily discover the changes that occurred in the ordered pairs of the rotations.
Those of you who read my blog regularly know that the majority of my school is comprised of second language learners. I always try to give as many visuals as possible to help my students who struggle with vocabulary. We drew arrows to show the clockwise and counterclockwise movements. We also color coded the corresponding shapes and ordered pairs as well.
We also wrote what it means to rotate 90, 180, 270 and 360 degrees.
Click here for a copy of the rotations INB page tables. I was excited to find over 700 of these composition notebooks in a storage room that someone donated 3 years ago. My principal didn't know they were even there and I asked if the math department could have them and he said yes! We have brand new notebooks for all of our students. How cool is that!
What is so nice about these notebooks is that the top is graph paper and the bottom is lined. Now I have to figure out how to use these. I am use to spirals and because I write large it is a challenge but I will work it out.
I also wanted to share a video that my kids absolutely love. If you haven't seen Colin Dodd's videos you are in for a treat. I wish he was still teaching 8th grade. (Sigh) Here is a link to Colin Dodds on you tube to view his other videos too. Enjoy.
I am excited about a project I am having the kids do next week. Can't wait to share it when they are finished. Pictures will be coming soon!
