We began today with an integer dot talk and a quick discussion over rational numbers. They had watched a video yesterday after finishing a pre assessment, so we talked about what they remembered. Next, we played some games that involved integers. Different students played different games depending on their current understanding of adding and subtracting integers. Some students played the Balloon Race game we played last week, but today we played it with a "Mathematicians Eye." They wrote down the equations that were created through out their games and looked for patterns or what they noticed about how the answers were found. They completed the Analyzing the Balloon Game worksheet in their notebooks. Others played the game Connect 3. In this game, students use their understanding of how to add and subtract integers to attempt to manipulate numbers rolled on a dice to get 3 in a row.
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In 7th grade math for today and tomorrow we started off with an activity called 24 which we will continue to do on the block days. 24 is very similar to the Four 4's activity. They are given 4 numbers and they may add, subtract, multiply and divide them to get 24. During this activity we focus strongly on creating one equation that can be solved to equal 24 as opposed to breaking it up in to steps. This activity is a great way for students to be able to problem solve as well as practice order of operations and writing equations. Today's 24 problems were: Level 1: 1, 12, 4, 5 Level 2: 12, 3, 9, 3 Level 3: 1, 4, 24, 12 We are starting our unit on Operations with rational numbers. In order to better understand how to manipulate all forms of numbers (fractions, integers, etc...) we had a discussion about the 4 operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) and what we were actually doing with numbers in each of these cases. This will allow the students a more conceptual understanding of operations with integers and fractions. Finally, I showed the students where their homework can be found. We typically use an online program called Tenmarks for homework. Students go to Tenmarks.com and log in. They were given their log in information and practiced logging in during class today. Homework will be assigned on the first day of the week and due on the last day of the week. It is for practice only and will not be scored in the grade book. However, parents can access their student's account. Please contact me if you would like information on how to do so.
Today we started with another integer dot talk. Then I gave the groups time to finish their visualizing integers worksheet. After they were done, they got to play a game called "Balloon Race." Here is the website where I found the game with a video on how to play: Up, Down, Flying Around The students had a lot of fun playing the game, while solidifying the conceptual idea of how to add and subtract integers. Today we started off with a different kind of number talk called a "dot talk." A dot talk is where I quickly reveal a set of dots and the students have to determine how many there are without having time to actually count them all. Since we're getting in to integers, I decided to use positive and negative dots and asked them to determine what number is being represented. They really liked this kind of number talk since it was at a level that everyone could participate. :) Then, I gave the students time to finish their pre assessments they started on the block day. Afterwards, they worked on the visualizing integers worksheet. We're going to discuss these more tomorrow.
Today and tomorrow are our first block days of the year. We started with a quick number talk and the students started a yearly pre assessment.
The last 30 minutes of class, I had the students work together in groups on a Visualizing Integers in real life activity. They were given scenarios that can be expressed using operations with integers and they were asked to draw a representation of it. From the representation, they were to write a number sentence. This real life visualization helps solidify the rules of integer operations. We started today and will finish on Thursday. After an amazing first week of school, it was time to start getting ready for our math units. Today, we got our notebooks ready and took a pre-assessment for our first unit: Operations with Rational Numbers.
In our notebooks, we began our Table of Contents and added in a section for the Math Practice Standards and Math Talk (ways we can start good math discussions.) We also glued in a plicker card for easy multiple choice checks. We started today with another number talk and video. This video is my favorite because it's all about how mistakes are good! It's important in my classes that students feel comfortable sharing answers and not being afraid be being wrong. Learning from our mistakes is important and allows our brains to grow. You can watch the video here. Next we did an activity called growing shapes. This activity allows students to look at patters and how they build on one another. Being able to see and understand patterns is one of the Mathematics Practice standards and is integral in being able to solve problems as well as building a strong foundation for algebraic thinking. First, I asked the students to think about how they see this pattern growing: We talked discussed as a class and I drew a representation of how the saw the pattern growing on the board. The kids found it interesting to visualize each other's ideas. There were lots of "oh's" and "I didn't think about it that way's". Finally, I had the students work as a group to use colors to represent the different ways our class saw the pattern growing. Being able to visualize and describe patterns is critical to algebraic skills they will learn later. Eventually, students will be able to see patterns and represent them using graphs and equations. Depending on how much time was left, some of the classes were asked to explain what the 100th case would look like. Aside from the fact that it would be "really big!" they determined that there would be 201 tiles along the bottom and it would be 101 tiles high. We started off our day today with our first Number Talk. Number talks are when I put a problem up on the board that the students are asked to solve mentally. After the students have had a minute or 2 to think about the answer, we discuss their strategies for solving it. We will continue doing number talks throughout the entire year to help students with their number sense and mental math strategies. Today's number talk problem was 12 x 8. There were some of the strategies from one class: After our number talks, we watched another video about learning math. You can watch the video here. We finished class with an activity called Paper Folding. The purpose of this activity is to get students to start thinking about how they can make convincing arguments. Here were their instructions:
The students found this activity challenging, yet fun. They really struggled with number 3. They kept coming up with a congruent triangle, just folded a different way! We talked about how you could fold something in to fourths by folding it in half and then half again. Then, the students started playing around with how they could fold the square in to halves differently.
Today I gave the students the opportunity to finish the Four 4's problem from yesterday. My plan was to give them about half the class to finish and share, but they were working so hard on it I decided to let it run through the entire class period.
I like to write my date as a math problem that needs to be solved, so today I wrote the date as August 4!+2. This introduced or reminded the students of the idea of factorials which are helpful in solving the Four 4's problem. After they had a chance to work in groups to get as many numbers as possible, I gave each group a piece of blank paper or poster paper (the posters started taking too much time, so I switched to blank paper after the first class.) The groups write their solutions down and posted them around the room. I then had the students do a gallery walk, where they got to check 10 problems. They put a star next to it if they agreed with the solution, or they wrote a comment on a sticky note if they disagreed. Finally, students got to look back over their poster and correct any mistakes that were found. I had to laugh a few times as I was walking around at some of the things I overhead students say. My two favorites were: "This is hard! My brain is growing!" and "Of course it's going to be hard, it's math. We just have to think." We started class watching a video all about brain research and how we learn. The big ideas the students got from it were:
1. Everyone can learn math! 2. The brain is a muscle. It can grow and shrink as we use or don't use it. 3. The deeper we think, the more our brain grows. 4. Whether or not we are a math person is determined by our experiences and beliefs. You can watch the video here Next we had a discussion about what we like and don't like people to say and do while working in groups. The kids came up with some great ideas and I compiled them on to posters that we will use as our group norms throughout the rest of the year. Finally, we put our newly compiled norms in to practice by working on the Four 4's problem. The challenge is to create the numbers 1-4 using exactly four 4's and any operations. The students came up with possible operations that can be used, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponents and square rooting. I was impressed with how many students came up with the knowledge of square roots as that standard shows up in 8th grade! An example of one of the solutions is 4*4+4/4 = 17 I love this challenge because it gets kids thinking deeply about numbers as well as reviews what they have learned about order of operations in previous years. Most classes only had about 5 minutes to work on this problem, so I'll give them more time to work on it tomorrow. |
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June 2016
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