Linear Function Star Chain

I've posted about this activity before, but I wanted to share a new Star Chain I made this week to review linear functions.  My students really struggled on a quiz last week when I mixed up the problem types.  I asked students to find slope, x-intercepts, y-intercepts , and zeros from all different types of situations.  They had been doing great when we studied each topic by itself, but once I mixed them all up on a quiz, many of them couldn't seem to remember what to do when.  They were finding rise over run when all I asked for was the x-intercept, or when asked to find a zero, they would find the y-intercept. 

I can't say that I blame them.  They've got a lot of brand new vocabulary floating around in their sweet little heads and they haven't yet made all the connections necessary to differentiate between all the critical elements of a line.

After doing a little reteach yesterday, I decided to pull out one of my older activities that I use when I need something that is completed individually and is self-checking.  The students seemed to enjoy making these star chains once they got the hang of how it worked.  They are very easy to make if you use my template.  All you need is twelve problems and 12 unique answers.  Be sure and give your star chain a trial run and make sure it doesn't loop back on itself.  I learned that lesson the hard way.
I would also allow at least 30 minutes to do this activity or  a little more if your students are slow at cutting things out.

You can click here to see the original post which explains how the activity works

Here is the  Linear Function Star Chain  I used today. It contains a mix of problems which require students to find slope, intercepts, and zeros from a variety of representations.

Football Frenzy

Today, I'd like to share an activity from one of my amazing colleagues.  My friend, Bonnie,  shared this activity with our team last week and I asked her if I could share it on my blog.  This activity is perfect for those fall Fridays when your students are more concerned about the big game than they are about staying on task and completing another boring homework assignment.  This activity would also be great for the Friday before the Super Bowl. 

If you are familiar with my Ghosts in the Graveyard, it is a very similar idea.  Students work in groups to complete a set of problem cards with the goal of moving their game piece down a football field in order to score a touchdown. Bonnie, used this activity to practice factoring, but you could practice just about any topic with this game.


Materials Needed:
1.  A large football field that your can draw onto your whiteboard or some green butcher paper
2.  A marker for each team to move down the field
3.  5-6 problem cards for each yardage:  5, 10, 15

Instructions:

1.  Place students in groups of three or four

2.  Give each group a “5 yard card”.  If group works all problems correctly, advance their marker 5 yards on the football field.  Once successful on a “5 yard card” they may advance to a “10 yard card”.  If successful, advance their marker 10 yards and they may work a “15 yard card”

3.  If the group is unsuccessful at any level, they must work another card on that same level before they move on.

4.  Once successful at every level, they may work cards at any level they choose.

5.  First group to score a touchdown wins

 

Here are the generic Football Frenzy instructions complete with templates for the football cards and markers

 

Here is my friend's Football Factoring activity

Factoring Football Cards

Factoring Football Answer Key

 

 

 

Ghosts In The Graveyard (New and Revised)

It's hard to believe, but October is already here and even though we are still dealing with temperatures in the 90's here in South Texas, it is time to start planning for my favorite activity of the entire year.

Ghosts in the Graveyard is an activity that I use every Halloween to review concepts I've taught since the beginning of school.  The activity has proven so popular that I've also had to create games to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I've also had wonderful feedback from readers who've tried this activity in their classroom with great success. 

If you want to try it in your classroom, it is time to start planning now, because it will take you a little time to get it all together.  The main preparation is developing your ghost problem cards, getting them laminated, and then cutting out the little ghosts. 

Materials you will need

8-10 problem cards (I will provide you with a template)
4 Tombstones that you will draw and hang up on your board
About 50 little ghosts for each class (template provided)
Answer Sheet for each student
Answer Key

Objective:  Collect as many "little ghosts" as possible by working together as a group to complete a set of review problems.

Instructions.

1.  On each large ghost template, write or type 3 or 4 problems (I copy onto orange paper and laminate)

2.  Before each class hang up four tombstones at the front of the room

3.  Place students in groups of 3-4 and give each student an answer sheet to record their work

4.  Pass out a problem card to each group and place the extra cards at the front of the room

5.  Students work together to complete the problems on their card and then call you over when they are finished to check their answers.  If all three problems are correct (and every single person has worked the problem) I give them a "little ghost" which they write their group number on and place on one of the tombstones at the front of the room.  They can place all their "little ghosts" on the same tombstone or they can split them up.

6.  After finishing their first card, they go pick up another card and begin working on it with the goal of collecting as many "little ghosts" as possible.

7.   About 10 minutes before the end of class, I call time and then the fun starts.

8.  What they don't know at the beginning of the class is that I have assigned a point value of each tombstone.  So Tombstone #1 might be worth 25 points, #3 might be worth 50 points etc. 

9.  To calculate the score, count the number of ghosts on each tombstone and multiply by the point value.

10.  The cool thing about this game is that the group that does the most problems doesn't necessarily win.  This is one of the few activities I do that the students will literally beg to do "One more problem"!

Get all the templates, instructions, and student answer sheet here

Mission Accomplished: 100% Engagement!

I'm not gonna lie. I'm a little overwhelmed this year. I have a total student load of 182 and it is starting to wear me down. I started the year with great enthusiasm and lots of creativity, but quickly found myself working 12-14 hours a day in order to prepare activities and keep up with the grading involved in such a high student load. I've got a very rambunctious group of ninth graders in algebra I which has led to lots of parent phone calls and some one-on-one counseling sessions in the hall trying to promote better behaviour. I'm slowing getting the classroom management situation under control and the students are starting to learn that as soon as they start talking, I STOP. They are realizing that the more they talk and act silly, the longer the lesson takes and the less time they have to start their homework in class.

For the last couple of weeks I have found myself in survival mode. Lots of direct instruction and guided practice. The kids are learning, but they are bored and so am I. Yesterday, I just had to do something different.

After a brief lesson on using the distibutive property to solve equations containing parentheses, I had the students scoot their desk next to their partners desk and then gave everyone some low odor dry erase markers (this is part of their school supply requirements). I then put up problems like this:

I gave them two minutes to work the problems out on their desks. I told them I wouldn't help anyone and that they would have to rely on their partner if they weren't sure what to do.

After about two minutes I began to uncover the steps using the "shade" feature of my smartboard. You could hear the moans and groans from the students as they realized their mistakes.

My day was made when one of my students in the last period of the day said "Can we do this more often? I really learn good like this." All the other kids chimed in, "yeah, let's do this again." I said we would definitely do it again sometime and I complimented them on everyone being on task and engaged.

Speed Dating (I promise this is really about math)

I got this idea from Kate Nowak over at f(t) and I had been wanting to use her idea for one of my test reviews this year. I did change it quite a bit but I am sure she will recognize it as her original idea. I have been trying to come up with a creative way to review for tests this year for each and every single test. It has been a chore, but with a little help from my friends in the edublogging community, I have managed to pull it off.

When students arrived in my class this morning, the desks were arranged in pairs so that the desks were facing each other. I had 6 pairs in each row for a total of 15 stations. I told them to sit wherever they wanted and they naturally sat with their best friend, but it was no big deal, because they would not be sitting there long.

I passed out the test review which I had prepared in advance. It had about 24 problems on it. As we began the review, I told the partners to work #21-24 and gave them 5 minutes. I started my timer and walked around the room giving assistance. After five minutes, I showed the correct solutions, let them fix anything they missed and then told them that one person from each group would now be rotating to the next set of desks.

For the first rotation, I said the person with the shortest hair should move to the next station. I then picked another 3-4 problems and gave them a time limit. My next rotation was the person with the longest first name had to move. This went on and on until we finished the review. The other ideas I had for rotating were student with most siblings, person with earliest birthday, person with shortest last name etc. The students quickly picked up on the fact that what we were doing was just like speed dating. I'm not sure how they know about speed dating, but I said I guess you could call it speed dating if you wanted to and they got a big kick about who all was "dating" who during the test review.


This activity ensured that they worked with many different partners. By keeping them guessing which problems we would do next, it kept them from rushing ahead and not being able to work as a team with their partners. The timer is also an important part of the review, because for some reason, it really helps keep them on task and get the problems finished when they see the time ticking down on the smartboard.

Around The World Partner Activity

One of my goals for this year is to find new ways to increase student engagement. I'm not a huge fan of homework. I'm never sure who is actually doing the homework. Is it the student, or a friend, or maybe even a parent? I like to actually witness them practicing the skills they have been learning but I get bored of book work or when I use them too frequently. I have been trying to do an activity every 5-7 days where the students have an opportunity to practice what they have learned over the previous week. I like self-checking activities and I like activities where everyone has to be engaged. I prefer partner activities, but will sometimes do activites that require groups of four.

Here is an activity I tried this week called "Around The World". I learned this activity from a co-worker who used it a lot when she taught middle school math.

I made 16 cards with one or two problems on each card like this.


I cut apart each card and glued the card to a piece of colored card stock. I put the question on one side and the answer and steps to solve on the back.








I then arranged my desks in pairs. I used 13 stations for this particular activity. I placed the problem cards in a sheet protector and placed one at each station. My coworker hangs her problems around the room. Doesn't matter how you do it. I wanted my kids seated while they worked, and she doesn't mind them standing up all over the room.



I then gave the students two minutes to line themselves up by birthday. They had no idea why they were doing this, but when they were done, I used the order to assign partners. Each partner had to go to a station with a blank piece of notebook paper, calculator, and formula chart. The instructions were to work the problem they found at each station. Compare answers with each other and then check their answers on the back of the problem card. They had two minutes at each station. Every two minutes I would give them the signal to rotate and they all moved to the next station. I made them go in numerical order through the stations.

Knowing they were on a time limit seemed to keep them on task. They students seemed to enjoy getting to get up every few minutes to move to the next station. There was a little silliness going on, but I didn't mind too much. Overall, I feel I got more work out of them than had I just slapped a worksheet on their desk and said "Due by the end of the period, get busy".

Appointment Test Review

One of my good friends at school shared this test review activity with me. She says she always has great results and good student participation so I was eager to try it for myself.

It works like this. I had the kids draw a clock on their paper that looked like this.



I then had the entire class stand up and told them they would have 2 minutes to make 4 appointments. They needed to make a 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock appointment. They could not book the same person twice and they were to sit down as soon as they made all four appointments so I would know who was finished. In each class there were several who still needed appointments after everyone else was finished, so I just told them I'd place them with a group for the appointment that they were blank on.

After their appointments were made, their clock looked like this.




After everyone was seated, I instructed the students to go and meet their 3:00 appointment and work problems 1-8 on the test review. They could work anywhere inside the room. Most just pushed desks together and worked like this.



After about 10 minutes, I called time and told the students to meet their 9:00 appointment to do problems 9-18. We continued this process until the reivew was either finished or we ran out of time. The kids had a blast and asked if we could do it again sometime. I really enjoyed seeing the 100% engagement and most of the students were great about helping each other and not just giving answers.

Self-Checking Practice Activity

Thought I'd share an activity with my readers that I have been using for the last couple of years. This activity is called a Star Chain. When you are tired of doing boring book work or worksheets, but your students still need a little extra practice, try a Star Chain!

Each student will get 12 problems of anything you'd like to practice. For me, it was solving linear equations.






Next, have students cut the problem cards apart.




After the cards are cut apart, students will pick any card they want to begin with. I usually tell them to pick the one that looks easiest to them. They work the problem and then find their answer at the top of another card. They tape the cards together. Continue the process until a chain is formed. If they do all the problems correctly, the last problem will match the answer at the beginning of the chain.



The next day, we connected all the chains and strung them up on the ceiling. I'll probably leave them there until the fire marshall gets me!




It's simple to make your own star chain on any topic! All you need is 12 problems with 12 UNIQUE answers. Just delete my problems and add your own!


Star Chain Solving Linear Equations

Poker Chip Test Review

I stole this idea from Kate over at f(t) and modified to make it mine. I thought it worked great and would like to share with you.

I don't know about you, but I dread test review days. How do you get the students to take the reviews seriously? You want for them to see the importance of doing the review for the sake of learning, but instead all you hear are comments like "Is this for a grade", or "Do we get extra credit for doing the review?"

I've been trying to collect interesting ways of reviewing for tests and I have shared a few like my Test Review Bingo game. Today we played something called Poker Chip Test Review. I'll admit, it involves a little bribery, but I'll do just about anything to get my math models kids to study for a test and actually do the review.

Here is what you need:
1. 5 poker chips for each group
2. A test review for each person in the class
3. One worked-out answer key for each group

Procedure:
1. Place students into groups of 3-4 and have them appoint a "Chip-Master" and a "Key-Master". I told them that the chip master should be the bossiest person in the group and the key master should be the most responsible person in the group.
2. Hand out 5 poker chips to each chip master, the reviews to each person in the group, and an answer key to each key master
3. The poker chips represent 1-2 bonus points on the test the following day. I made mine worth two since my math models kids usually have such low test grades.
4. The role of the chip master is to keep the group on task and to be in charge of the chips.
5. The role of the key master is to keep the answer key face down and to check the answers for the group after they finish each problem or section of problems. (Be sure the key master understands that they have to do the review also)
6. Teacher circulates around the room answering questions and confiscating chips as the need arises.

Here is what I confiscated chips for (decide what is important to you and make your own list):

1. Group is off task or not following classroom rules. (Today I took up chips for talking about non-math related subjects, cell phone texting, profanity, etc)
2. Copying answers directly off answer key
3. One or two members doing the work and the others copying that work
4. Asking me a question that they had not discussed with the entire group before asking me.

At the beginning of class, I was very strict and tried to confiscate several chips right away. This got the rest of the groups busy . I was amazed to see them actually discuss problems and help each other. With six groups, I was able to easily spend quality time with each group. I would stop by and discuss the set of problems they were working on and talk about what they needed to remember for the test tomorrow. I was also amazed at how seriously some of the chip masters and key masters took their jobs. It really kind of surprised me. They did not want those chips taken away. I only had one group in each class that had the full 10 points at the end, and one poor group only had one-token left at the end of the period.

Overall, it was a successful day and an idea I'll definitely use again.

Ghosts in the Graveyard

Yesterday, I tried a new activity in my MMA class given to me by a colleague. This is by far one of the most successful group activities I have ever done with my at-risk kids. It is called Ghosts in the Graveyard for Halloween, but the activity could be adapted for any holiday. Here is how it works.

1. You will need 8 "Problem Cards" with 3 problems on each card. I made my cards in the shape of Ghosts.

2. You will need 5 black sheets of construction paper to symbolize the graveyard. I put tombstones on mine and hung them on my dry-erase board.

3. You will need about 50 "little ghosts" for each class period.

4. 2 glue sticks to attach the little ghosts to the graveyards.

Procedure:
1. Divide class into groups of 3-4 students
2. Give each group a problem card
3. Every member of the group works the problem and raises their hand when they are done. You go over and check their work and answers. If EVERYONE has done the problem correctly, they get a "little ghost" which they put their group number on and hang in any one of the graveyards.
4. As they finish a "Problem Card", they go get another one. The goal is get as many "little ghosts" as possible to hang in the graveyards.
5. About 10 minutes before the end of the period, I draw for how many points each graveyard will be worth. I use 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100. So if graveyard 2 is worth 50 points and a group had 2 ghosts in that graveyard, they will get 100 points.
6. Tally all the points for the groups and give prizes to 1st and 2nd.
(pencils, pts on a test, candy, etc)

The kids in my MMA class who hate to do work begged to play longer and asked if we could play again at Christmas so I said sure, I could come up with another one. I think it will be something like pin the ornament on a Christmas Tree. I'll make the big "Problem Cards" in the shape of presents.

You can get this activity here

An activity that actually worked!

Happy Labor Day weekend to everyone! I hope all of you who have already been in the trenches for several weeks are enjoying your long weekend. To those of you starting school within the next couple of weeks, I hope your year gets off to a great start.

Friday, the day before the holiday, I didn't want to start anything new in my Math Models classes so I played a little game that worked really well. I thought I'd share it with you. I had each student draw a 4 x 4 grid on a piece of notebook paper and number each space randomly with the numbers 1-16. I had a jar on my desk with the numbers 1-16 on little scraps of paper. We have been reviewing solving linear equations of all kinds, so I prepared a list of about 50 random equations to solve. I put an equation on the board and everyone worked it while I watched. I then worked and gave the correct answer. After I gave the answer, I drew a number out of my jar. Everyone who had the correct answer, got to "X" out that number on the grid. We played until someone got 4 "X"'s in a row. Did some cheat, and mark out a number when they really got it wrong?, probably, but for this game it doesn't matter. I was just really trying to keep them on task and doing something productive the day before a holiday.

I thought it worked great because I didn't need any materials. You could do this little game with any topic. All you need are some questions prepared in advance and some cut up numbers. in a jar. Also, the smart kids don't really have an advantage over the ones who struggle because they placed the numbers randomly on the grid. Everyone had a chance to win. They were really into it and wanted to know if we could play the game again sometime. It really surprised me that these classes got into the game so much. Of course, there were a couple who never do anything anyway that weren't really all that enthused, but for the most part, I got excellent participation.