Interactive Notebook Left Side Assignments

While I still have a month left in this school year, I'm working on getting ready for next year.  I'll be doing full Common Core in all of my classes and starting an interactive notebook.  One thing that has had me a little puzzled is what the students would do for the left side.

If you're not familiar with interactive notebooks, they're a way to get students to record input information (typically notes from the teacher, often in the form of foldables) on the right side and process that information into a meaningful output (problem sets, etc) on the left.  That left side sounded so BORING to me so I searched around for ideas.  Cobbled together from assignments I've seen posted around the internet and what I did as a kid, I put together a list of 20 possible Left Side Assignments.  I won't give my students choice about which assignment to do every day, but I hope to give them more and more freedom as the year progresses.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iVRTPYjc1qSi_UBFcxQ7EhmFfksDx01y/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=117898042260189978383&rtpof=true&sd=true

We'll glue this page into the notebooks.  My plan is to maintain a Table of Contents both in my notebook and on chart paper.  I'll note on the chart paper which options they may choose from for the left side.

Do you have any other awesome left side ideas that I should know about?  

Mathematically yours,
Miss B

P.S.- It may be interesting to note that my first experience with interactive notebooks was in my AP US History class.  I disliked the class and honestly got very, very little out of the notebooking.  I realized several years later that the main reason I didn't get anything out of it (besides my general disinterest in history) was that I wasn't given a firm foundation in how to make good choices about what was worthy of inclusion in my notebook and what was really just a detail that I wasn't responsible for retaining long-term.  I'm committed to making the notebooking a purposeful endeavor for my class, so I'll be showing them how to make those good choices and offering feedback for how to do better.  My history teacher?  He just handed out 110-120% as a grade if you used a lot of color.  I know I used 4 or more packs of Crayola markers that year.  The causes of the War of 1812?  Not so much... 

321 Exit Ticket

I just have a simple freebie to share with everyone today.  I'm using a 321 exit ticket as part of a project I'm putting together for my Master's.  The template came out cute and I thought I might save people some time if I shared it.  Enjoy!



If you've never heard of this kind of exit ticket, you simply give kids three categories or three questions.  I like things of increasing cognitive demand.  One simple one I could use for 8th grade geometry would be:
3- Give three examples of quadrilaterals.
2- List two polygons for which the area formula is A=bh.
1- Write one question you still have OR make and solve an area problem if you have no questions. 

Mathematically yours,
Miss B

Systems of Equations Mystery Bags

The pre-testing crunch time is stressing out my poor Algebra I class.  After quite a miserable day on Tuesday, I knew I needed a different approach to our lesson for today.

I started the lesson with yet another example of a systems of linear equations word problem.  Cars and motorcycles were the topic for my male-heavy class.  I could see the boys' expressions change when it finally "clicked" for them since we were talking about a topic many of them care about.

Then I brought out the "mystery bags."  Outside each brown paper bag was a systems word problem.  Inside the bag was the answer to the question comprised of real objects that the kids could count out in many cases.  We worked through them as stations and the children found more success than they had been finding previously.  Hooray!

Here's a document with the problems we used and clipart of the answers.  For the candy, pencils, and yarn questions, I used real objects, but I've included the clip art for all of the questions.   Sorry if the pagination is a little off in this file.  You might need to add or delete some spaces to get the problems on their own pages.  Box isn't being friendly, but I know Word works better for most people than PDFs since you can edit as needed. 

Download here: https://app.box.com/s/muyaycbisot41wqa5l6j


Mathematically yours,
Miss B

Quadratic Catapult!

My students impressed me SO MUCH today!  I am just so excited by the project we're working on and how well they've done so far.

I gave my students a table of available supplies and a budget of $50.  At the end of last week, they previewed this materials list and I showed them a Powerpoint of a variety of photos of catapults constructed from these materials.  I wanted them to do their own research, but barring me checking out mobile labs and supervising web browsing, that wasn't going to happen in school.  Too many of my students don't have internet access at home for me to assign anything for homework that requires the internet.  My pre-selected photos actually worked well because it gave us an opportunity to talk about how certain designs worked. 

Material	Limit	Cost for one	Need	Cost
Plastic Spoon	1	$10
Masking Tape	3 feet	$5/foot
Rubber Band	6	$2
Popsicle Stick	10	$3
Small Cup	2	$3
Cardboard (approximately 8”x10”)	2	$4
Wooden Clothespin	2	$5
Wooden Pencil	4	$4
Staple Remover	1	$25
Paper Clip	4	$2
Binder Clip	4	$2
Total

They started off by spending a minimum of 10 minutes planning their design before I let them "purchase" materials.  Construction was full of redesigns, and all but one group worked together well to solve the challenges they faced.  By the end of the hour we spent on the project today, all groups had a working model that they had tested at least a few times.  (Photos to come)

For those of you wondering, the approximate teacher cost for this project (for 50 students in groups of 3 or 4) was about $15, though you likely have most of the materials in your classroom already.  Substitutions are certainly possible.  No groups used a staple remover.  Few chose pencils, paper clips, cups, and clothespins.  I did want to have a large enough variety of materials that students wouldn't recreate the same design in each group.  I also had several students ask to bring in materials but I didn't allow them to do so.  I could have, and it would have increased variety, but I wanted to keep the playing field level for this project. 

One thing to note: I made a model at home just to test out my idea.  It sent the projectile about 5 feet, perfect for a classroom project.  My awesome students, however, have sent their beans flying 40+ feet (from one end of the room to the other).  It was organized chaos in my room today, but all in the name of learning.  So, if you're at all concerned about safety or the discretion that your students would use during this project, it might be good to test outdoors.  Of course, it's pouring rain for three days here, so we're testing inside and making it work.  I actually had the librarian offer her space, too, so I think we're going to try to be really quiet while we test tomorrow!

Tomorrow, the groups will collect accurate data on the distance their bean travels and the time it takes to land.  We'll find an average for each of those data sets and use it to find the equation of the parabola.  I can't wait! 

8th grade math common core vocabulary

I'm trying to start planning for next year, when my district will fully implement the common core.  Thankfully, the transition in 8th grade won't be terribly drastic; much of what we're going to cover next year aligns to what my state has considered to be Algebra I.

One thing I want to implement next year is an interactive notebook, at least for my on-grade-level class.  If I'm truly ambitious, I'll do it for both preps.

I started today by looking into Frayer models and deciding that's how we'll record most of our vocabulary.  Mini models are created and will fit 4 to a page with room for a title on the page.  We're going to count 20 pages from the back of the composition book and paste in our glossary along with a glossary tab.    I'm leaving extra space because I expect I'll need to add in additional words either because kids have forgotten things from previous grades or because we're still going to be assessing our old curriculum, so there will be a few gaps I may need to fill in. 

Now, I have my notebook set up and I'm using Post-its to plan out which foldables will go where and what other types of information need to be in the book.  I'm hoping to have a complete model done before school lets out (but I'm also realistic enough to think that won't actually happen).  I would love to get my coworkers on board with this, but I might need to pilot it next year before they'll use it, too.

Wish me luck!  I'll be posting photos as I have progress. 

Mathematically yours,
Miss B

EDIT (5/1/13): I'm adding the glossary document I created here.  I based it off the vocabulary contained in the CCSS Framework for 8th grade and included a few of the words that I expect to be prior knowledge but I see my students struggle with frequently.  If you find any additions, please let me know.

Exciting News!

Yesterday, I made a big decision: I'm going to submit my candidacy to become a National Board Certified Teacher next year.  I work with four NBCTs, three of whom I know well and who have encouraged me to pursue certification.  I also have a friend who teachers Special Education who is also going to go for certification next year.  What an exciting endeavor this will be.  I cannot wait to get started! 

Mathematically yours,
Miss B

Graphing Quadratic Functions: one insight

Last school year, I remember my students had a miserable time remembering the different ways that a function was transformed when they looked at the equation.  (Does minus 4 here mean that the graph goes up, down, left, or right?  Does a negative in front mean the parabola opens up or down?  Why would I want standard form versus vertex form?)  This year, I decided we needed some memory tricks for these along with our notes and our families of functions scrapbook. 

Cute trick #1 is an oldie but a goodie.  If the a value is negative, the graph is opening down, so "frowning."  Negative=frown, so that's should be an easy one to remember. 

Cute trick #2 is inspired by my kids last year who struggled with the idea of vertical stretch and shrink.  They so wanted to talk about horizontal stretch and shrink when they viewed graphs, but that's a bit backwards since an equation in the form y = 3x^2 has an a value greater than 1 which they understood to be an increase in size.  To that end, I did a little demo today in MS Word with clip art pigs.  I started with three equally sized pigs.  I kept the "parent" the same.  I changed the other two pigs based on a values of 2 and 1/2.  Tonight, I added the annotations and tomorrow this will be on my wall. 

 What sorts of tips and tricks do you share with your students to make graphing easier? 

Mathematically yours,
Miss B