Algebra 6.3 day 3

Reflection

Today, I had some success with the gradual release model.  I started the students in seminar, had them do a warm up that was to jog their memory of our last lesson on multiplying with exponents, and gave them a problem they could do that would prepare them for today’s lesson.  The warm up was effective because several students didn’t recall how to do what they’d learned on Monday.  (We had no class yesterday due to the math HSPE).

The lesson went as planned. Students worked in pairs or groups of 3, compared answers, and helped each other.  I’d changed the PowerPoint so that it was clearer on what they should write in their notebook.  I also wrote the homework on the board, under today’s date, so that they could write this down as soon as they entered class.

After doing 2 examples, one guided and one on their own, I let the students work independently in class and called on a smaller group of 5 students who all had trouble getting the “constant multiplier” on the last quiz.  Of the 5 students, 4 participated actively, 1 said she had a headache and would not participate.  I reviewed several examples with this group and by the end of the examples, all were finding the constant multiplier.

The time got away from me, or I would have had the students do an exit task.  Next time, I’ll assign a timekeeper so we have time.

Lesson Powerpoint lesson plan is in notes section of Powerpoint

Algebra 6.1 day 1

We are starting a new unit on exponential relationships.  We have just completed a unit on linear relationships. In a planning meeting with my mentor I learned that in his class, which had just started the unit the day before, he’d compared a linear relationship with an exponential relationship and his students understood the new idea.  I thought that this approach would also work well with my students, and wanted to incorporate multiple representations (tables, graphs, recursive routines) so that students could compare and contrast in many ways.  I created the attached worksheet.

6.1 day 1 Lesson Plan

6.1 day 1 Worksheet

Reflection:  The lesson went very well.   Having the last data point on the graph really showed the difference.  Students needed prompting with the recursive routine, mainly in trying to put to words what they’d figured out on the table.  The fruit flies were effective… students figured out the pattern quickly.  Exit tasks indicated that most students were able to identify the differences.

I shared the lesson and worksheet with the rest of the Algebra 1 teachers and know that at least 2 other teachers are using it.  Yay!

Algebra 6.3 day 1

Today’s Algebra lesson went well. I’d do it similarly next time, except break up the practice problems so that there are ones to do in class and ones to do at home.  I decided to break up the lesson into 2 days, so that today was just focused on multiplication of exponents and tomorrow will be about raising exponents to powers. 

Trying not to do too much, but having more practice with what we’re doing, has made the class more “within reach” to my struggling students, and has helped classroom management. 

I’m intentially planning dyads and high level questions, and today’s task of finding the rule  worked really well.  I had most of the students identify the correct rule.  Even though many of them struggled with expressing it with the right vocabulary, they expressed it correctly mathematically.

I’m getting several examples of student work up on the screen every class, and evern reluctant students are not fighting the idea of going up and sharing their work as much.

I’m still testing out the seminar model.  I started the students in seminar, and I am still not sure at what point I should be “releasing” them to do their own work.  It’s working well to have a small class where it’s easy to check in with each student.  It’s working very well to have students point to their partner, so that everyone has a partner for the AB Dyads.  I feel like the class has really turned a nice corner since our class meeting.  I intentially planned a fun competition to keep kids focused during practice yesterday, and perhaps this is a little carry over.  I notice I’m circulating around the room better, and positioning myself next to talkers better.

Algebra 6.3 day 1 lesson plan

Jan 15 Algebra review BINGO

My students have told me that they want more fun things to do.  So, last week, I had a Bingo game to review the big ideas of chapter 3.  It turned out to be a review at the start of class, then a chance to help individual students in different areas that they were confused in.  Most of the students that “got it” were engaged and busy showing their steps and showing their work.  Those that were lost were sitting there helpless or had their hands up.  The sheet was challenging enough that most of the class was busy for the entire classtime and I didn’t get any Bingo’s until about 5 minutes before the classtime was up.

Logistics:  I had students randomly write 1-24 in the blank spaces.  I made sure everyone wrote their numbers in pen.  I told them not to have the same order as others, or they’d be tied. Then I gave them a worksheet with a variety of problems (simplifying using order of operations, solving equations for x, finding the rate of change, finding the “starting point”) with solutions that equaled 1-24.  They had to show their work to get the prizes.  I let students work together in groups of 2-3 to solve the problems with the expectation that everyone had to show their own work.  If by the end of the period they got a bingo, they turned in the sheet with “bingo” on top.  I checked their work, and those that didn’t show their steps I gave back the sheets to show their work if they wanted the prize.  (I had little stampers…the kids liked them).  Everyone got participation points if they showed some work on their worksheets and I could see that they were on task for the classtime.

Next year, one additional direction I’d add is for the kids to not completely shade in their bingo’s or I won’t be able to read the numbers!  I’ll show examples next time. They’ve got to understand that they can’t make it hard on me or I won’t want to do it again!

Jan 22 Alg 1 4.2b

Reflection

I started class reviewing 4 exit tasks and having students review what went right and what went wrong.  I pointed out with extra emphasis that lines had to be straight and could be good lines of best fit without hitting any of the data points.  We wrote the equations of the lines, and emphasized that there could be several different equations that were right, but they had to be in the ballpark.

I then gave them the problem of the saturated fat vs total fat of different fast food burgers for them to plot, draw a line of best fit, and write an equation of the line.  I told them that it’s not a test, but I wanted a test environment, so I could see what they knew as individuals. Today was a short day, with early release and the assembly, we had 35 minutes.  The kids had 15 minutes to do this task, and many finished early.

The first few minutes were spent walking around to help students get their axes and scales right.  I ended up asking the group, “who knows about nutrition?  Does the amount of saturated fat depend on the amount of total fat or visa versa?” Thankfully, some of the students knew the answer.  But many needed a reminder that the dependent variable goes on the y-axes, and I wrote y and x on the top of the columns for the saturated fat and total fat data.  The test environment gave me a chance to give individual help to lower skilled students.

Usually with tests I tear up the papers of those that talk, but because this was just participation points, I told them that I’d be calling parents of any talkers.  I did end up calling 2 parents.  One didn’t answer, and no voicemail, so I sent an email home.  The other parent and I had a nice conversation, starting with “your son’s not in trouble,” getting the sigh of relief, and then sharing what’s going on.

I know as a parent that if I get a call from school, there is automatic stress.  Somehow, those magic words of “he’s not in trouble” pave the way for bad news in a proactive and preventive way.  We had a good conversation where the dad learned that his son is failing, is a nice kid in class, and has to look through his quizzes and do quiz corrections this weekend.

I’ve contacted the other parent before, with no academic improvement in her son, but his attitude does seem better than it was at the start of the year, so I’m hopeful.  It’s hard when a student misses so much school and it appears to be related to being with one parent or the other.  He’s missed Fridays because his dad was picking him up early, or missed Mondays when his mom was supposed to drop him off.

Jan 19 lesson 4.1a

Two tools were particularly useful:  Activating prior knowledge and the exit task.

My main goal was to get the idea of “slope” clear in the minds of the students.  The warm up asked them what they thought “slope” meant in their own words, and showed misconceptions (many thought it was the y-intercept.)  Others knew of “rise over run” but some of these same students put the change in x over the change in y when in came to the exit task.  Were it not for the exit task, I’d have no idea that half the students still don’t know what slope is after all the great responses I got from the class discussion.  I was able to incorporate several dyads.  The “10 minute lesson” idea was quickly translated to “make sure the students are doing a dyad or asking questions at least every 10 minutes.

One important piece of planning was to focus on just positive slope.  I’d initially planned on showing positive and negative, and my mentor’s guidance of keeping it simple so the concept gets understood.  This advice was great help.  This will hopefully prevent confusion down the road.

On a classroom management note, the students were really unfocused.  Whether it’s because it’s spirit week and kids are wearing pajama pants, or whether it’s because there’s a winter ball coming up and notes were being passed around asking about that, something was in the air, and I hope that it will be more normal tomorrow.

Jan 20 Alg 1 lesson 4.1b

Lesson Plan:

Reflection:

Started the class with the same activity as yesterday:  List all the words you associate with “slope.”  I had the students build from PTT to dyads to whole group.  I wrote the list of words on the board as students called them out.  I put a question mark next to the ones that I thought needed further explaining. I think having the word wall helped the students get a sense of meaning. I’ll repeat that next year.

The goal for today was for the kids to recognize positive and negative slope, large and small degree of slope, and be able to match graphs with equations.  I emphasized looking at the direction for the + or – before the coefficient, and we reviewed about 6 different graphs.

Homework Q&A went well.  We reviewed just 1 question and it was a good tie into today’s lesson.

It was worth the time to walk around and tell each student whether they were an  A or B while they were in “seminar,” since they don’t sit in the same spot each time.  I had the students do about 5 dyads and share outs during the course of the lesson.  Each dyad was a variation of “A’s share with B’s and the B’s raise hands if their answers were same.”  This went well.

The question came up about whether it mattered which point was (x1,y1) and which point was (x2,y2).  I thought this would be a good chance to show how it doesn’t matter. I had 2 students who wanted to come up to the board and show how they found the slope when given 2 ordered pairs.  Here’s the big surprise: one of them did it completely differently than I expected, but many in the class understood what she did.  Yesterday, I had shown how to find the changes in y and x from a table.  Today I gave them the slope formula and showed how to get slope from ordered pairs.  She took the ordered pairs and put them into a table then figured out the slope from there.  She found the change in y and change in x… just not the way I expected.

It brings up an interesting point:  does it matter what I show first vs what I show second?  She said it was easier and I need to go back and try to understand what part of it was easier:  is it because she could line the y’s right under each other and finding the difference is easier when subtraction is vertically lined up?  Or is it because she found a way and didn’t see why she needed to learn a new way when the original way worked? It meant more steps, but it was something she felt comfortable with.   Or something else altogether?

We ran out of time for the exit task, but the discussions sounded like students were getting the idea of slope and how to find it.