"Can we stop talking, I want to take my quiz!"

So today was day two of practice OAAs/shortened morning periods, but at least it was semi exciting, because the kids took the practice math test today! Side note mini rant however- don't you think if you were taking a MATH test, you may want to bring your calculator with you to school?? Yeah, I would think so, but apparently about 40 of my kids thought otherwise. I was running around my room like a crazy person trying to find as many calculators as I could for students as quickly as possible, and I thought all was restored in the world when I handed my last kid his calculator. But then about 15 eighth graders come storming in my room asking for calculators as well. Needless to say, I was not very happy with them. So, throughout the rest of the day, I made my little speech about how if you depend on calculators to do math (which most of them do unfortunately) then they shouldn't depend on me to supply a calculator for them in case I run out. We'll see come test day in May what actually happens...

Note/worksheet center

ANYWAYS...back to solving equations. Today went very well! I had a few kids not pass one step equations the first time, but surprisingly they didn't complain when I told them to go get another worksheet and try again before taking another test. They realized their mistakes and took responsibility for them, got the worksheet and then did great on the quiz the second time around! I am seeing great things happening here. My students are taking ownership for their work. When they are stuck on something they ask someone for help, and when they succeed, the celebrate their successes and feel a sense of accomplishment.

"Best thing ever!"
During my 5th period class, I was observed for my resident educator program. No biggie, in fact I forgot she was even coming until she walked in the room! She was very impressed with the kids' ability to stay on task. Yesterday I described the scene as organized mathematical chaos, and today I just might go as far as to say it was simply organized mathematics. Because of the schedule, 5th period has had the longest amout of time to work on this unit, and today they really gelled. Students were helping one another, and waiting patiently for me to help when the help from a peer wasn't enough. They were referring back to their notes, and staying on task. At some points during the period, I would even say it was somewhat quiet because everyone was focused on working on one of their own problems.

Close up of note pages

I was very anxious to ask my kids how they thought this process was going, but I wanted to wait until my observer left, just in case they were like "This sucks! "I'm not learning anything" Not, that feedback like that wouldn't be beneficial for me to know what needs to be change, I just thought it would be better if she wasn't there ;) So after she left, I asked my kids how they liked this process of learning at their own pace, now that they have had 2 days of working like this. Everyone started screaming at once, but the screams weren't out of frustration, they were out of joy. I finally had to stop everyone and have kids talk one at a time. I asked them why, specifically, they liked the unit and got the following responses:
"I'm not bored, it's the best thing ever!"
"You are making us do the thinking and teaching rather than you teaching it to us and us sitting there taking it all in"
"I like being able to talk it out with other people and seeing what I did wrong"
"Explaining it to someone else makes me feel good!"

There was one more student with his hand up, so I called on him. I expected him to continue with the trend and say something positive about the unit. To the untrained ear, what he said may not have seemed like a positive comment, but in fact it was the most revealing comment of the day. "Can we stop talking about this and get back to work, I want to take my quiz, I'm settling for nothing less than100%!!" This coming from the kid who tries to get me off task every. single. day.!!!



All these comments were so cool! It is so heartwarming to see my kids excited about learning and doing well and not be embarrassed about it. Middle school is such a hard transition for some kids, and it's easy for them to go down the "I wanna be cool" path, which often times doesn't include liking or being good at school. I find it so reassuring to hear kids who used to moan and groan at the mention of the word ALGEBRA now be shrieking with excitement the moment they come in the door, BEGGING to solve equations.

Note pages in the INB, turned into a flip chart

Organized Mathematical Chaos...Independent Study Day 1

So here we go! I took the wonderful advice from Sarah and took a risk by doing a solving equations independent study. Throughout the year, I have given my kids various equations just to get a mini pre-assessment of where they are as far as solving equations goes. We did one step equations with proportions and two step equations with temperature conversions. By doing this, I realized that there were HUGE differences in the amount of knowledge my kids had as far as solving equations went. This, coupled with the fact that my school has been wanting teachers to try differentiated instruction caused me to want to plunge right into this independent study when I read about it on Sarah's blog.

Placement Test
So, Friday, I gave my students a placement test that consisted of questions for each of the following topics: solving 1 step equations, solving 2 step equations, solving 3 step equations, solving multi-step equations, and solving equations within story problems. In order to skip a section, students had to get a 90% on the section. This placement test I used will also serve as the end of the unit test. This way, students will see exactly how much growth they have made during the unit.

Quite a few students surprised me and skipped not only the one step equations, but also the two step equations. They even showed me their work for how they got their answer and it was actual math work, not just random guess and check! I was impressed!

The Process
Today, students came in, and got their checklist and activity log. Every student will need all 5 note pages in their INB (so even if they skipped 1 step, I want them to at least tape the 1 step notes into their INB as future reference) So, students went over, picked up whatever note section they needed, and worked through the examples. They then needed to check the examples with me before they could go get the practice worksheet. I used the worksheet generator found here to create practice worksheets and quizzes for each section. Students can do as many practice worksheets as they feel necessary before they take the quiz. They must get at least an 85% on the quiz in order to move on to the next section. If they don't they will retake the quiz. Everyone seemed really excited about this concept, and it seemed to allow a relaxed tone to settle over the room.

Because I'm essentially OCD when it comes to organization, I decided to color code everything. So for example, everything dealing with 1 step equations (notes, practice worksheets, and quizzes) were copied on yellow paper. Everything for 2 step equations is on green paper (pictures to come tomorrow) My hope is that it not only helps me keep the paperwork organized, but more importantly the students. Already just 1 day in, I can already tell this was a wonderful decision. It has already helped out numerous kids.

Organized Chaos
So today was a crazy schedule because we are doing practice OAA state testing this week, so the morning consisted of shortened periods. The afternoon was when I got a full picture of how this unit would actually play out. The kids all came in, and after I explained how everything would work again, I turned my kids loose! Things started off great. Everyone was working on their own thing, going through the notes and asking EXCELLENT questions. I was up by my desk and looked out onto my room. By that time, the kids started working in larger groups and the volume level was getting pretty loud. I had a moment of panic, thinking "Oh my gosh, what if my principal, or someone comes into my room RIGHT NOW. They would think I had no control of my class! But then I quietly calmed myself down and realized what was actually happening in my classroom. All the conversations were about math. Students were helping one another, and using vocabulary like "inverse operations" and reminding others to "check your solution". I was so proud of them. They were ALL engaged, and no one seemed bored. Everyone was working on something that was challenging for them as an individual student, not as a collective class, which to me is worth any sort of "chaos" that on the surface of things seemed to be happening (even if it really wasn't the case). Once I came to this realization about the incredible amount of learning that was taking place, I changed from praying no one would walk in, to praying my principal or curriculum director would walk in for a check up!

Sitting here now, I am finding myself so stoked to get back into school tomorrow so that my kids can continue working on the specific skills they need to in order to be successful when solving equations. More to come tomorrow!!

Solving Equations by

Simplifying Expressions- Going Back to Kindergarten!

Happy 2013! So one of my new year's resolutions is to blog more so here I go!

Since today was the first day back, I had kids start class by writing new year's math resolutions which was a huge success. I was surprised at how honest they were about them!

Then I began my algebra unit with my classes. We talked about linear and nonlinear patterns and tomorrow we will be discussing simplifying expressions. My worksheet for this lesson is on my school computer, but I'm not going to have time to blog tomorrow night so I figured I would go ahead and write this tonight and I will add the and worksheet tomorrow :)

Last year, I found that my students really struggled with combining like terms. I couldn't get them to understand that x + x^2 couldn't be combined. So, I decided to reteach it and made it very concrete (some of the kids even complained that it was too kindergarten-y) but guess what...they had an epiphany and mastered combining like terms! This year, I decided to just start out with the revised lesson so here it is:

I started out by giving the students a worksheet that had the following expression on it:
2 cows + 3 pigs + 1 dog + 1 cow + 2 dogs + 5 cats + 1 pig
I asked the students to simplify the expression and they came up with 3 cows + 4 pigs + 3 dogs + 5 cats. I asked them why we couldn't combine anything further, and they told me that you can't combine dogs and cats; they are 2 different animals.

Then I did something they all loved. We did the same problem in Spanish. I speak Spanish and my kids find that very interesting, so I decided to take the opportunity to teach them a few words. They came to the conclusion that they changing the language didn't change the outcome. You still can't combine "perros" (dogs) and "gatos" (cats).

Once they seemed to be ok with words, I switched to colored squares. They then had to make expressions with the colored squares (1 yellow + 2 pink + 4 orange + 1 pink + 1 yellow + 1 pink + 2 green + 2 yellow). Once they laid all the squares out on their desk, they were instructed to simplify the expression by combining the like terms. Students came to the conclusion that the like terms in this example were the colors. They, very easily, came to the conclusion that the simplified expression was 4 yellow + 4 pink + 4 orange + 2 green. I asked them why we couldn't just say the simplified expression was 14 colored squares. They all were like "duh..because they aren't the same colors...you can't combine the pink with the green!"

Finally, we made the jump to variables. And here was the cool part (that I still remember to this day) one of my kids said the following "Wow, I know what we can do! Each variable, even ones with different exponents can be a different color! And that's why we can't combine them!" "Now I get why you made us go back to kindergarten! It's so easy!" While yes, eventually I will teach them WHY you can't combine x + x^2 mathematically so that they don't get to high school and college saying well they can't be combined because they are different colors and have people look at them like they are insane, but for the time being this lesson worked for my kids. Really well.

I think this year I am going to add a game to this lesson. I will have kids get into groups and will give them dice with variables written on them (y, 2x, 3y^2, etc.) One student will roll the dice and write down all terms. They will roll again and write down all of those terms. The other student will do the exact same process. Then they will simplify their expressions by adding the two rolls together. The first person to simplify their expression correctly gets a point. The first person to 5 points wins.

Again I will add the worksheet once I get to school tomorrow and will talk about how the lesson goes, but in the mean time, does anyone have any cool ideas for simplifying expressions??

Simplifying Expressions by

Combining Like Terms Activity by