You Can't Keep A Good Calculator Down

Folks, I have exciting news for you tonight. I have just resurrected 5 TI-83+ calculators from the dead on my kitchen island this evening. After a short surgical procedure, I am happy to report that all five calculators are alive and doing well.

You see, although my school can afford fancy new red turf for our football field, we don't seem to have the funds to replace any of our aging calculators. I've been nursing my classroom set of 30 ever since I inherited them shortly after being hired at "Paradise" high school.

In case you don't know how to restore dead calcualtors, here are three steps to try. Try the steps in order. Sometimes I get lucky and step one will work and I won't need to use the other steps.

1. Remove all four batteries. Press and Hold the [ON] key for 10 seconds. Then put the batteries back into the graphing calculator and turn on. May need to readjust screen’s contrast again.

2. Remove one of the AAA batteries. Press and hold the [CLEAR] key. While holding [CLEAR], reinsert the AAA battery and then turn the calculator on. The calculator should display the message "RAM Cleared". Release the [CLEAR] key and then press it one more time to remove the message.


3. Remove one of the AAA batteries. Press and hold the [DEL] key. While holding [DEL], reinsert the AAA battery and then turn the calculator on. The calculator should display "Waiting...Please install calculator software now". Follow the instructions for the TI-83 family or TI-84 Plus family to reinstall the calculator operating system.


If steps 1-3 don't work, it is time to resort to step #4 and that is what I did tonight.


4. Remove all of the batteries including the round lithium battery for 5 minutes. After the 5 minute period, reinsert all of the batteries and turn the calculator on. Adjust the contrast if necessary.


Now, drum roll please. . .. . Here are my calcualtors after surgery! Tonight I was successful in restoring 5 calculators that I thought I was going to have to scrap!!!

Final Exam Time!

As much as I hate giving semester exams after Christmas, I love the fact that Wed-Fri of this week consists of half-days. I've been cleaning my room, working on new posters for my word wall, printing out work for our systems unit coming up, and trying to get to the bottom of all my piles. I've also gone to lunch with my coworkers each day and did not have to gulp down my food!

In other good news, I am enjoying teaching in a school where I don't have to curve the hell out of my Algebra I final just to keep 60% of the class from failing the first semester. In fact, I didn't curve them at all. Our final exams are made at the district level, but overall I was happy with this one. The exam grades came out fairly close to their average in the class.

The only thing that frustrated me was the fact that there are some kids who can look at a multiple choice question like "write the equation of the line that passes through the points (0, 4) and (1, 2)" and get the wrong answer even after they plot the two points on a grid and notice that the line is "falling" and therefore must have a negative slope. Or they could notice that the y-intercept was 4 and mark out two of the bad answers. Two popular answers for this question: y = 2x + 4 and
y = -2x + 6. I guess I shouldn't be too upset, 80% of my students got that question correct, but it still bugs me that 20% still don't have enough reasoning skills to eliminate the bad answer choices!

Here is another one that really bothered me. Only 54% of my students got this one correct. John goes to the barbershop for a haircut. His haircut is $15 and he leaves a 15% tip. How much change should John get if he pays with a $20 bill? Oh and by the way, this question was not multiple choice. It was what we call a "griddable" item. I looked through their booklets and saw some pretty interesting methods being used to solve this problem, but not many were correct. I think in middle school, they get so hung up on formulas and the percent ratio that they just don't learn to think a problem through logically.

Christmas Tree Linear Art Project

If you are looking for something to do with your algebra students this week, you might enjoy this little Christmas tree project I made up for my students to do on Friday. It involves writing the equations of the 19 line segments making up a Christmas tree. I am also going to have them write the domain values for each line segment. This assignment will lead into the linear art project I do each spring where the students will be required to come up with their own drawings and equations.



Christmas Tree Project

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.

A Warm-Up Solution That Works For Me

This year I am doing something that is really working well for me. At our school we are required to give daily warm-ups. If you don't count them for a grade, most students will not do them. If you do count them for a grade, they are a pain in the rear to collect and grade and record. Last year, I took them up every Friday and gave a completion grade for them, but even then, the task of looking at over 150 papers every weekend in addition to other assignments that needed grading became too much for me.

This year, I have been working hard to encourage my students to keep neat and organized notebooks. They have a warm-up section, a note section etc. After each warm-up I will say, now, make sure this warm-up has the date on it and make sure you place it in your warm-up sections. During the notes, I constantly remind them about the importance of the date, title, etc.

So I came up with this idea, or I stole it from someone, I can't remember which, of giving Binder Quizzes.

The Binder Quiz serves two purposes. I am able to grade their warm-ups without ever taking them up, and two, I get to see who is keeping their notebook in good working order.

We take a binder quiz the day before every major exam. In the quiz, I ask them all sorts of questions like, "On Sept 17, what was the answer to warm-up #1, or on Sept 20, what was the title of your notes, or In topic 2-1, what was the answer to example 3.

They have 5 minutes to complete the quiz. If their binder is in order, they will finish in about three. If they have to dig through their back packs to find their papers, it is impossible to complete in 5 minutes.

Here are two examples from the same class. One person who keeps up with their stuff and one who has never brought his binder to my class one single time.






I can not begin to tell you how much this Binder Quiz has helped me this year. I am no longer stressed about grading warm-up and overall my kids are doing better than ever about keeping a neat and organized binder where they can quickly find their resources when they need them.