Day 121- Meatballs

Since today was the first day back after spring break, I thought I’d remind them of volume in an effective and engaging way while incorporating PrBL and the SMP’s. It was a great activity.

Day 120: Compound Volumes – Math Assessment Project Shell Center

This went well. Students struggled productively. I lied to them again, and it was surprisingly effective, again.

day 119: Volume Win!

We really needed volume practice. I love the whiteboard stamp game because I can provide immediate verbal feedback to students and they can get differentiated support. It was awesome to be able to pinpoint their areas of confusion and help them to get clarification. I do not emphasize speed, I have them work in pairs or 3’s and they only get the “point” when everybody in the group has the correct solution with work & they can explain it.

This encourages them to help each other & the whiteboard provides a safe place to experiment, since if feels less permanent than pencil & paper. Students had increasing confidence as the problems progressed. I carefully scaffolded the problems and we discussed its similarities and differences to previous problems before I started the timer. Tomorrow we will work on volumes of compound solids.

day 118: Volume Fail

I have 3 class days this week, then there are 2 days of conferences before spring break, so I know students will forget some content over the break. I decided to teach volume in these 3 days, and then address surface area, which is harder for students, after the break.

I planned to complete students interactive notes on volume on Monday, then have Tuesday and Wednesday for students to work on concept development and applying their notes using Mathematics Assessment Project’s Calculating Volumes of Compound Objects.

During the first period of the class, I realized that all volume notes in one 50-minute period was overload for my students. I think they left feeling overwhelmed, and I talked too much. Next year, I need to find a day to practice area (maybe a stations activity), then do volume of prisms & cylinders the following day and incorporate some basic practice (simultaneous round table?). The next class we should discuss and complete notes and maybe a lab on pyramids and cones showing that these objects have 1/3 of the volume of their prism counterparts, and include some basic practice before and compound solids after the lesson where students can apply concepts from the previous lessons.

The lesson today did improve with each of my 3 geometry classes, with minor adjustments to pacing and demonstration & discussion. However, I feel like it should have been spread over two days, with area practice prior to it.

To compensate, tomorrow we will do a basic practice whiteboard/stamp game with students in pairs or 3’s before jumping into the math assessment project lesson mentioned above.

I think some of these tiny failures come from not having taught geometry to these students before. I am looking forward to having the opportunity to re-tune my pacing for next school year and avoid these failures, but of course, I am sure I will find new ones!

Day 117: File Cabinet! Finally! fun!

Our state testing starts tomorrow, I had a lot of goals I wanted to communicate to students before they jumped into these assessments:

• Remind students that they are capable of solving problems, even when it has not been explicitly taught.
• Intro to surface area, its coming up soon.
• Build, confidence, success and curiosity about mathematics.

[update 3/14: This sheet and other 3 act math resources can be found here.]

Day 116: Quiz on Scatter plots & Basic Statistics

The mean score on the scatter plot assessment was a 3 out of 4 and the mean score on the statistics assessment was a 3.5 out of 4. Many students were surprised that they know so much. I think this means they were ready for the quiz!

Day 114 & 115: Ugh! Scatterplot word problems

I procrastinated blogging about these two days because they were rough. I just gave students time to work on word problems where they practiced writing equation in slope intercept form and using it to make predictions. When I assigned this, I had no idea it would be so painful. Next year I will break the problems up and make it a “stations” activity. I think part of the problem was that students felt overwhelmed by a packet. I also need to make time to include a better INB page with this type of problem.

I want more time!!! Surface area & volume projects galore!

There are too many projects that I want to incorporate for teaching surface area and volume. I’m not sure yet how to pick and choose and adapt to best meet my students needs. Please share other good projects in the comments! I am writing this blog post as a way to list options for future reference:

Surface Area Lisa Bejarano: Interactive notes Mr. Stadel: File Cabinet Kaplinsky: Foil Prank Miss Calcul8: Tin-Man Project

Volume: Engaging Math: Volume of a Pyramid Tap into teen minds: Prisms & Pyramids, a 3- act task Fawn & NCTM: I am a Doughnut Kaplinsky: Gumball Machine Kaplinsky: Drug Money Kaplinsky: Cigarette Butts Yummy Math: Penny Wars Dan Meyer: You Pour I choose Dan Meyer: Meatballs Dan Meyer: Water Tank MARS: Calculating volumes of Compound objects Open Middle: Find 3 different cylinders that hold between 110 and 115 cu. ft. of water. Fawn: Listerine to Fuji water

Both Surface area & Volume: Mathalicious: Canalysis Kate Nowak: Spiky Door Piccini: Pop box Design & my post on how it went MARS: Evaluating statements about enlargements MARS: Designing Candy Boxes Mathalicious: Cheese that goes Crunch with these adaptations

Day 113: Mean, Median Mode & How to think about data

This went really well! I gave the students a sheet that listed everyone in the class and they had to fill out eye color, shoe size & average number of texts they send per day. I did this because students sometimes need to be forced to interact with each other and I have a few new students that I wanted everyone to interact with. I also hate it when students don’t know all of their peers names, so I try to encourage this when I can.

Then, it got interesting. I asked the class to find the mean eye color. They started to work, a few asked how to find the mean and I explained that they should add them all up and divide by the number of numbers. They grabbed calculators & looked back at their data, confused. I shut up and listened to them….”that doesn’t make sense” “How do I add colors?”, etc…

…enter discussion on qualitative vs quantitative data, considering the information when trying to describe the data, discussions on how to summarize qualitative data. Awesomeness.

Next we looked at shoe size: students immediately complained that men & women have different shoe sizing systems. We considered converting them all to men’s sizes, then we talked about how useful this information would be….other students suggested separating them into separate averages for men & women. The class agreed that this would provide more useful information.

For texts we discussed outliers and how they impact the mean. We related it to grades. The class decided that the median would be best to describe this data set.

We also made a fun foldable. It was a worthwhile day considering the purpose in interpreting data as well as reviewing basics.

day 111& 112: prediction equation applications & Histograms

I had a sub both of these days because my stepdaughter was having a baby! They are both doing well!

day 111: I gave the class a set of problems where they were given enough data to write a prediction equation, explain the meaning of the slope and use the equation to make predictions. Students said it was horrible, but they say that a lot when they have a sub.

day 112: I have a nice set of problems that walk students through bar graphs vs histograms, qualitative vs quantitative data, and using statistics to describe the data. Students actually said this was worth their time and understandable.