Who Did it?

As we continue reviewing for "the Test", I'm constantly looking for new activities and ideas.  I came across "Systems of Linear Equations Activity - Clue Game" a while back, but never got to use it!  I announced to my eighth graders that we would be doing this activity last week, and I have never heard such disappointment than when I told them we were going to have to post-pone the activity until this week.

 

So, we picked it up today, and it was a hit!  They had a blast and enjoyed every minute of it!  They worked so hard and I even had students asking if they could work extra problem sets!  When does that ever happen?

When my last period seventh graders came in, they wanted to know when they would get to play CLUE... I guess I'm writing a set for them :-)

Who says review has to be boring?

Build-A-Burger

Now that I have enjoyed a nice Spring Break, it's time to start reviewing for the TEST.  I loathe this part of the school year.  I've already started reviewing through my bellwork, but now it's time to emphasize the topics that my students missed the most on their benchmark testing.  Tuesday, I'm planning a "whole body" review of how to tell if a function is linear, a direct variation, or an indirect vartiation (a post will follow).

As this is my least favorite part of the year, I'm always looking for ways to make me at least loathe it less.  I stumbled across the directions and downloadable pattern for the Build-a-Burger activity on TpT (the author has lots of other review activities, I'm excited to try).  I printed each burger ingredient on colored paper and laminated it, then I had some helpers cut them out.  I asked our cafeteria to donate small take out boxes, so that there would be something to store the burger pieces in. 

I wrote my questions into a powerpoint and for each question that a team (two students in this case) answered correctly, the team earned a burger ingredient.  I liked the fact that there is something for them to actually touch to signify getting a question correct, and the kids seemed to really enjoy it.  Of course there ended up being more than one winner, which was okay with me (they really knew their stuff for this chapter).

I'll be using this activity throughout the next three weeks to let them practice answering questions.  Hopefully this will help them "ketchup" :-)

Water Park Project

I've finished up with my 8th grade curriculum, and so it's time to start reviewing for our state test.  With two weeks left until Spring Break, I wasn't quite ready to hit the test practice yet, and I was thrilled when I stumbled across this Water Park Project.  The project allowed me to review slope, midpoints, the distance formula, proportional relationships, slope-intercept form, and solving systems of linear equations in one assignment!  I've even treated the project as a real job assignment by doing "foreman checks" to see if they had met their deadlines for finishing each task. 

I purchased a flip chart that was actually large sheets of graph paper from the office supply store, and the kids loved that they were like giant post-its.

 

 

 

 

               

                           

We finally finished up with the final designs and reflection assignment today, so I wanted to show off their finished projects.

Super 10!

I am consistently trying to find ways to reward my students for hard work.  For years, I have used homework passes for meeting long-term goals.  This year, I wanted something to reward my students for more short-term, mainly weekly, goals.  I came up with  "Super 10" pass.  Students can use it to add 10 points to any assignment.  Believe it or not, this has been a source of great excitement, especially with the boys, who love the passes because they have a super hero on them. 

I have also included one super 10 in the Lucky Numbers drawing prizes this week!  I'm always glad when I can get them excited to meet a goal.

When the lights go out...

Today we started off with no lights!  There was a blown breaker on the high school side of our building (we're a school within a school), and I was the lucky teacher that had no working emergency lights.  Thankfully, I had set up a space in the hallway between the lockers as a gigantic coordinate plane earlier in the year.  I split my 7th grade class into five groups, and we practiced graphing lines in slope-intercept form.  It had been a little while since we had practiced slope-intercept form, so this was the perfect time to review with the state test coming up. 



The huge coordinate plane I made with painters tape!





I use a small dry erase board to write the equations so the kids can see them.













I would call a group to come up and would show them an equation.  Then, they would work together to graph the line on the coordinate plane, using their bodies as the points!  Amazingly, this activity held their attention for about thirty minutes. 

They were starting to get restless, so since we had just been studying statistical displays, I had an impromptu survey about their favorite things about spring.  Then we talked about which of our statistical displays we could actually use.  They made some awesome circle graphs and bar graphs.

As you can see, they did a great job!  Thankfully, as they were finishing up, the power came back on!  Hopefully the last three days before break won't be near as exciting!

Temperature Box and Whisker Project

One of the topics that I teach my seventh graders is how to display data in a box-and-whisker plot and how to read them.  I have been searching for a good project to do with box-and-whisker plots for basically the last five years, and this year I came across an awesome idea!

Click on the picture to go to the file.

I literally found this activity by accident while searching on google.  I am always looking for a way for my students to collect their own data and use the math that we are studying.

First, I had my students use our school's set of ipods to find the average high temperatures for two cities of their choice.  They love using the ipods, so this was the perfect chance to use them.

 

Then students organized their data into a rough draft of a box-and-whisker plot.   

When they were finished with their rough drafts, they came to me and got colored bulletin board paper (instead of poster board).  They used yard sticks to make their box-and-whisker plots, since they were such a large scale.

 

 

I think that their end product turned out great!

Anchor Charts... Middle School Style

I had been seeing all kinds of amazing anchor charts all over Pinterest, and I started thinking that they would be perfect for my classroom.  Unfortunately, when I tried to draw anything by hand on posterboard, it was a total fail.  That was when I turned to my computer skills.  I have been very happy with the results, especially because my principal had my posters printed  12x18 at Office Depot! 

The best part is that my students have actually been using them!  Our favorite is the pink Linear Functions poster, it definitely turned out the best.  I was so glad to finally fill up my "word wall" so it could stop being a blank abyss.  All my posters are available at my TpT store.