Definition Doctor

The first lessons of the text book are so heavily packed with vocabulary that I found myself going back to my bookshelf and looking for ways to practice, and not just memorize, the new vocabulary.  I found a strategy called "Definition Doctor" in a book entitled Style and Strategies for Teaching Middle School Mathematics by Edward J. Thomas and John R. Brunsting.

"Definition Doctor" piggybacks off of a technique called Vocabulary Knowledge Rating, or VKR.  In VKR, students rate their knowledge of the vocabulary on a scale of 1-4.  My sample is at the right and yes, there are a lot of vocabulary words in lesson one!  There are 28 vocabulary words in lessons 1 through 10.  I need to whittle the list down to an essential 13 or 14.  

For the "Definition Doctor" technique, students use the words that they rated in their VKR.  One student volunteers to be the "Definition Doctor" and another student chooses a vocabulary word from the list and asks the "Definition Doctor" to define and explain why the word is important to the lesson or unit of study.  If the "Definition Doctor" is stuck, they may ask another classmate for a "second opinion" to get some help.  After the definition and significance has been given, the student who chose the vocabulary word becomes the "Definition Doctor".  Practice continues like his until all the words have been reviewed.

When I read this techniques, I loved that it asked students to make connections and put a value on the vocabulary.  The word really is important to understanding the material!  I also liked that the activity has flexibility to be a large group, small group, or pairs activity. 

I wanted to make "Definition Doctor" feel more like a game, so my students would review all of the words.  I can totally see them reviewing 2 or 3 words and then chatting for awhile until I came to see what they were doing or listen to their group.  By putting the vocabulary onto cards, the technique had more of a game feel.  If it was a game, then there is a start and a finish.  The cards would need to be gone through before they could stop.  It's not perfect, but better than just choosing off of a list.  The cards also let me focus the practice to specific words because I can take out words I don't want my students to focus on.

The template that I used to make the cards is here.  As always, if it will be useful to you, you are welcome to it!

Practicing Expressions and Their Vocabulary

Opps!  Should have had the "s" in coefficients in parentheses. 

The next lesson in the text is about the different parts of an expression and is very vocabulary heavy.  My challenge has been how to practice the vocabulary and do something more than just memorize the definitions. 

With some thought, I came up with two different ideas.  One of them is in the picture at the left.  I had these numbers left over from when I was "The Mathematical Wonder" superhero for the day last school year.  They got me thinking that I could have the kids make expressions and define the different parts of the expression to a partner.  It wasn't a bad idea, but I didn't feel like I was stretching them.  Then, brilliance struck and I thought, "what if their expression had to meet specific criteria?".  That would challenge them to create an expression and understand the vocabulary words! 

I created some simple task cards which you can download below.  If the dollar store is out of the numbers, I am going to use the plastic bottle tops that I've collected and my trusty sharpie to make my own set of numbers. 



I wanted something else to practice with that was active.  So I thought about the Kagan cooperative group technique called "Mix-'n'-Match".  I have had good success with this in the past.  If you're not familiar, students each have a card and have to go and tell someone the answer to what is on the card (or explain something to another student).  So student A explains to student B, then Student B explains to student A what was on their card.  The two students then swap cards and go talk to someone new.  This goes on for 5 minutes or so.  I like it because there is a lot of practice happening in a short time frame and it gets them up and moving.

After I made the cards, I thought that they would work well for an inside-outside circle activity.  For this activity, students make two circles with one circle inside of the other.  Students face each other so that one student on the outside circle is facing a student from the inside circle.  They talk about the cards, swap them, and then either the inside or outside circle moves while the other stands still.  There are lots of variations on this activity, so do what works for you.  Below are the cards that I made.

Stations for Real Numbers

Well, school has barely ended and I am already working on next year. There will be no rest for me this summer as I get ready to have a blended, leaning heavily towards flipped, Algebra classroom next year. Making the videos is not what I think will be the most time consuming! What is taking longer is figuring out how to use all of class time that I now have!  In some cases, it is narrowing down the activities that I have and figuring out what will be the best use of the class time.  In other cases it is finding the activity or tweaking something to better fit the topic.

The first lesson that we do in the Saxon Algebra I (2009) text is about classifying real numbers. I like the calk walk activity that I did last year, but I want to use that to review with the following week.  I want to spend the class time after the first video actually practicing classifying the numbers. For some reason, this needs more practice than I usually give it.  So I decided to set up some stations and practice and practice and practice classifying numbers in the real number system.

Here are the stations (I'm still working on the names)...

Station 1: Popsicle Stick Sort 

In this station students will be asked to sort 20 popsicle sticks with different numbers on them.  The white cups are the classifications of natural, whole, integer, rational, and irrational.  The green cups have multiple groups.  I made the categories of irrational/real, rational/real, rational/integer/real, rational/integer/whole/natural/real, and integer/whole/natural/real.  The first task at this station will be to sort the popsicle sticks into any cup that would classify the numbers.  They will then write down 3 observations about how the numbers were sorted.  The second task will be to use only the white cups and decide which is the best classification for each number on the popsicle stick.  They will then write down 3 observations about this task.

Station 2: Real Numbers Concentration

For this station, students play a traditional game of concentration (or memory), but they get a match if the two numbers flipped are from the same set of numbers and they can identify the set.  Students can't use the same set, two times in a row.  So for example, if student 1 made a match using rational numbers as the classification, then he/she couldn't make a match on their next term using rational numbers.  He/she would need to use another set.  I am also not letting them use real numbers for any of the classifications.  Also, all of the cards have a match, but depending on what set students use the last ones may be challenging to classify.

Station 3: Real Life, Real Numbers

In this station, students will be asked to sort the real life situations into the best set of real numbers.  Students will need to explain why they have picked that particular category for the situation.  The trickiest are the circular questions.  Students tend to classify those as rational when it should be irrational.  All of my examples came directly from my textbook.

Station 4: Tic-Tac-Toe: Real Number Style!

This is a basic game of tic-tac-toe with a twist: To win you need to have 3 of the same sets!  Students can pick their own numbers and classify them into any set that the number belongs.  Another student can block them by putting another number in a box and classifying it in a different set.  Some strategy will need to be used and really thinking about the sets that a number can belong.  Students may classify numbers as real in this game.  I'm going to monitor it closely and see if that is all that they are using.  I can always change the rules! :)

Station 5: Real Number Carousel

The last station that I am going to have the kiddos do is a real number carousel that is free on Teachers Pay Teachers.  I am going to have this set up for them to work on while they are waiting for a station or when they finish all of the stations.  Hopefully that will help with down time.

Sorry about the long post.  If you made it all the way to the end, then I hope that you found something useful that will make next year better!  I would love to hear how any of the activities goes for you.  I will update after I try them in the fall!

Finding the best deal is harder than it looks...

I had another reminder this week about how different my childhood was from the students that I teach in my classroom today.  I realized it this week while studying unit rates and watching my students try and find information in advertisements.  I began to be very thankful that my parents taught me a lot about unit rates through very authentic and natural experiences.

My mom is a huge bargain hunter.  When I was younger, she would scour the grocery store ads and compare prices.  She had the calculator out and would go down to the unit prices to get the best deal.  Even standing in the grocery store, she would estimate the unit cost of the generic peanut butter and the big brand name on sale.  I remember whining many times about what was taking so long and my mother, ever so patiently each time, explained that you have to figure out the best deal to make your money go farther.  She explained how she was figuring out the unit cost and often times asked me or my brother to get the next item on her list, but to get the best deal.  Sometimes she even handed us a coupon and asked us to figure out if it was a better deal with the coupon or not.  So much great mathematical conversation and mental math work was going on during those trips to the grocery store.  I guess now I am thankful for always being dragged along with my mom.  She taught lifelong skills that I still use every time I stand in the grocery store aisle trying to save a few pennies.

My kiddos aren't growing up like this today.  This week, after defining unit rates, discussing them, giving practice problems, and my kiddos appearing ready to take on the world of unit rates, I was so wrong.  The application of this skill is trickier than I anticipated.  I gave my students free reign to find three products to compare by finding the unit rate and determining the best deal.  I thought that this would be a great real world experience for them.  I realized that they have a lot of trouble just reading a grocery store advertisement (which can be a completely separate lesson on ratios).  The ad was 4 boxes of cereal for $8 and the kiddos were comparing ounces to $8, not $2.  The kiddos also brought up items that were on sale for 25% off, but no price for the specific item was given.  They wanted to know how to figure out the price.  There were also lots of questions about how to calculate the unit rate, too!  I thought that they were so prepared to handle this!!

So, it is regrouping from here.  I have learned that this is not a life experience for them as it was for me.  I assumed when I shouldn't have and I am regretting not building more background for my activity.  My first plan is to reteach and practice again.  I made a scavenger hunt for them to do.  The Powerpoint is embedded below for you to use.  I used free clip art from a Google search and I did use names from kiddos in the class.  You can totally change that up. 



Each student will will in the answer sheet and I can buzz around to answer questions and just listen to their thinking.



After they finish the scavenger hunt, they can return to finding products to do their comparisons.  I am hoping that it is just a matter of some more practice and experience. 

Addition and Subtraction Word Problems

This foldable is very specific to lesson 3 of Saxon, Course 3.  I wanted something this year that was more concrete and organized than what I did last year.  Classifying the problems comes up a lot it feels like during the beginning lessons of the book.  So I felt that it was important that the kiddos have something simple and straight forward to refer back to when needed.  I started with a square and folded the corners into the center.  I found it helpful to fold the square along it's vertical and horizontal lines of symmetry so that I could get the corners to match in the center better.  A little color and labeling and the outside was completed.

The inside is all organized the same.  I said if this classification was for addition or subtraction word problems, wrote the equations in words the same way the book did, and wrote the formula.  Then I made up an example similar to the book's example and solved it.  I also color coded the parts of the equation. 

I consistently used the same colors.  I am torn about that because the colors don't stand for the same thing each time.  It is just about position in the problem.  I don't want them just memorizing the position of the numbers in the problem and I am wondering if that will happen.  We'll see what happens when I teach it.
 

Properties of Numbers

Today I was working on making a chart for my 7th grade kiddos about the commutative, associative, identity properties of addition and multiplication and the zero property of multiplication.  What I created is in the photo below:
 

It is just your basic table of properties and I wasn't in love with this.  I thought color would help and it did, but not enough for me to be satisfied.  I liked that this year I was going to have the kiddos decide how they would remember the property whether it was by a key word, picture, phrase, etc.  It will be more meaningful to them if they come up with something like "changes places" for the commutative properties than if I just tell them a key word.

I just remembered somewhere in the back of my head doing an activity that was actually interactive.  So the hunt through the computer files began.  I did come across an activity that I did a couple of years ago.  It was an information gap.  If you aren't familiar with an information gap, students are partnered up and each partner has missing information on their sheet.  The other partner has the information that each one needs, so through questioning each other they learn how to fill in their gaps.  It is an ELL technique that I learned several years ago.  It is actually really hard for the students to figure out how to ask for the information that they need.  They want to just copy each others' paper.

Here is the information gap that I developed for Lesson 2 of Saxon Math, Course 3.  Saxon doesn't write the property out in words, but I think that there is great value in knowing how to say and write the math in words.  Therefore, I added the words section.  Also, the first page is the full chart completely filled.  The following two pages are for the students.


I like this idea much better than just filling out and color coding a chart.  I am also thinking that this activity would be good to try using an inside-outside circle.  Since it is early in the year, it would give them a chance to talk to everyone in the class.

If you liked the format that I used at the beginning, you are welcome to it.  Here it is: