Day 52... Taco Cart Take 2

Today in Intermediate Algebra, I presented the "Taco Cart Sequel". In other words, where would the Taco Cart need to be located for Dan and Ben to arrive at the same time? My class today was such an amazing example of perseverance. These kids haven't always had positive experiences in math, but they tackled this problem for an entire class period. The girl above started on a small whiteboard, then took over her neighbor's whiteboard, and finally moved to the desktops, guessing and checking her way to victory. When she was done (with just a few minutes to spare in class), she asked if she was the first person to finish. When I told her yes, her response was "Man, I feel like such a NERD!" :)

Day 51... Correlation Stations and Taco Carts!

Wow... today was a busy day!

In Stat today, we did Correlation Stations. Can I just say that I really LOVE having the Presentation Room available for activities like this? The kids had a blast going from station to station, measuring various relationships and graphing their points. In this photo, the students rolled a die, tied that many knots in a rope, then measured the length of the rope. They graphed the point (Number of Knots, Rope Length).

Then, back downstairs for Intermediate Algebra. Today we did Taco Cart by Dan Meyer and the kids LOVED it!

Here is one group's whiteboard. I loved seeing their thinking and how well they worked together! Yay team!

Day 50... Whiteboard Time!

In Intermediate Algebra, we've been working on word problems. We started out on Work Problems and now we're on Distance Problems. Today we worked on converting hours to minutes, which is always a struggle. For example, in this problem, Jason's time is 0.35 hours and I had the discussion with many students on whether that was 35 minutes or not. By the end of the hour, they were converting without a problem.. yay! :)

Day 49... Paperwork!

Wednesday and Thursday are our block schedule days, where we have 3 classes per day plus Advisory. Advisory time is a "homeroom" type class that acts as a study hall, college & career curriculum, other "extra" curriculum as mandated by the state, club meetings, etc. During this time, students can sign up with a teacher for extra help or to make up work. This is my stack of test corrections and reassessments after 2 days of Advisory... looks like some grading will be in my future! :)

Day 48... Carousel MC Practice

We've finished a unit, which means it's time for a test! Today we did some multiple choice practice to help us prepare. Since it's a block day, I didn't want them sitting at their desks practicing for 100 minutes, so we got up and moved around. Each station (lavender sheet) had 2 multiple choice questions on it and there were 10 stations taped up around the room. Each kiddo had an answer sheet numbered 1-20 and then they moved around between stations to practice. There were some really awesome discussions happening and it made for a really awesome day.

Day 47... Work Project

Today in Intermediate Algebra, we again worked on word problems, including a project where the students had to write their own problem and solve it. Overall, I was impressed by the thought and care they put into their problems. Yay, kiddos! :)

Day 46... Introducing Distance

In Intermediate Algebra, we've been working on the traditional algebra "Work" problems. Today we introduced Distance problems. Overall, the kids did pretty well, but I was shocked by how many kids put 1 hour and 45 minutes as 1.45. *sigh*

On the upside, it was a great discussion about average speed and why Historic Route 66 had such a different average speed than the Turnpike. :)

Day 45... Normal Distribution Practice

Today was the last day of class before Fall Break, so I wanted to practice in a fun way. Each group received a set of cards, with a problem on one side and an answer on the other side. Students started with all of the answers turned up and chose one problem as a group, flipped it over and worked that problem. Then they found that answer in the cards on their desk, flipped it over and repeated the process.

The cards were on this #Made4Math post if you are interested... :)

Day 44... Assessing the Normality of M&Ms

Today marks the first day of the 2nd quarter, so I have a renewed hope for taking photos! Today was "Senior Skip Day" since this weekend was Homecoming, but I told my students last week that I *would* be teaching and there *would* be chocolate. :) We "rolled" M&Ms and recorded the number of Ms showing in order to determine if the dataset would be considered approximately Normal.

Day 43... Dan as a Bean Counter

I don't have a photo of today, but we started "Work problems" in Intermediate using Dan Meyer's Bean Counter video. It went really well! Thanks, Dan!

Day 42... Catching up!

No photo today! Thursdays are my day with only one class, so sometimes I forget. So sorry!

Day 41... Rigor and a Silent Conversation

You know those days when you are exhausted, ready to go home, and then you find out you have a meeting? Yeah, today was one of those days. During our Leadership meeting, we read an article on Rigor and did a Silent Conversation. If you've never done one, it's pretty interesting. Kids respond in writing to a piece of text/art/work without talking. After a few minutes, they rotate, this time responding to the text and to the previous comments. Good strategy that I'll want to store away for future use... :)

Day 40... Normal Model

One thing I *really* adore about my classroom is the dry erase desks. Here, students are working on the Empirical Rule in AP Stat.

Day 38 and 39... Move along, there's nothing to see here!

Seriously...

We reviewed for a quiz, then took the quiz the next day... quite the boring life I lead!!

Day 37... Comparing Distributions

Today we practiced writing comparative descriptions. This seems like something that would be fairly easy, but from years of experience, I can tell you that it is one of the most forgotten concepts once the AP Exam rolls around. We did a modified stations activity with each station having a different type of graph (histograms, boxplots, stemplots, and dotplots), then had 6 minutes per station to write a comparative description. We then did a peer grading of these after looking at sample responses. Overall, I was really impressed and hope to see some great work on their quiz next week!

Day 36... Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make me a Match!

Part of our discussion in AP Stat has been on different representations of data. Here, students had to match a histogram, boxplot, and summary statistics, which led to some awesome conversations and logical reasoning!

Day 35... More World Problems

Since we've been working on word problems, the exit ticket today was to write your own... Overall, I was fairly impressed with their work! :)

Day 34... Deciphering Word Problems

Another failure of a day for a photo... :) I'll try to take one of my notebook at some point!

But today in Intermediate Algebra, we started working on word problems and figuring out what they mean. I had the students match the problem to the variables to the equation to the solution. It didn't quite work out as well as I had hoped, but oh well :(