Mrs. Hester's Classroom : Interactive Notebook

Showing posts with label Interactive Notebook. Show all posts

June 1, 2014

Quadratic Functions Unit

Well, my students and I have been in quadratic functions for quite a while now! Especially since our EOC testing fell in the middle of it all.

I also feel like I did much better job this year with letting them explore/figure out the intricacies before we formalized in their notebooks. So, for example on the "factoring" pages, we spent a day just using algebra tiles to understand what was truly happening and the relationships between the numbers. Then we formalized.

All that to say, quadratic functions took a long time! But my students really seem to have a good understanding.

So... here are my notebook pages.

Man, as I'm uploading, most are blurry. So sorry!! Silly phone camera :(

Our Learning Goals/SBG page.

I plan to implement SBG more next year and these pages are allowing me to dabble in the idea without fully committing yet.

Investigating a quadratic function for the first time...

Focus and Directrix pages from Sarah. The kids LOVED seeing their parabolas take shape in the wax paper. I know that focus and directrix aren't technically in my algebra 1 standards, but I just couldn't resist!

The same properties of quadratic functions pages that I did last year. Still worked well and still a hit!

Angry birds and vertex form.

Standard Form and a summary page from here. I tweaked it a little to fit my needs.

Here's a better picture of the summary page.

Original idea and post HERE.

Then the discriminant and quadratic formula.

The students and I derived the quadratic formula (yep, that ones officially in my standards) but I haven't taped it into my notebook yet. The big orange box is where it will be taped soon.

The factoring and completing the square pages took multiple days and I wanted to give students plenty of time to explore with algebra tiles. I gave lots and lots of problems that students built and answered with the tiles before we ever formalized and talked about procedure.

I really liked doing it this way because students understood the factoring method. We were un-doing the distributing and pulling everything back apart. There was so magic wand waving - just some great mathematical understanding happening.

Also with completing the square. We built lots and lots of squares, filling the missing corner and then looking at side lengths and x-values before every going through just the process.

Well, these are most of the pages! A lot happened in class between all those pages, so sorry I can't bring you in for that! Hope something helps!

March 23, 2014

Pythagorean - Part 2

Part 1 with my new intro for this year is HERE.

Our finished right triangle pages looked like this...

I know that's kind of a crazy picture. I used my CamScanner app and sent it to a student that was in ISS so she could check her work before moving to the next activity.

If you don't have CamScanner I highly recommend it! I can scan and save as a high quality pdf right from my classroom - huge time saver!

Anyway... next we completed this little booklet.

It was all about the relationships between areas and side of the squares formed. Never once did my students plug into a formula while completing their book - I love this! The types of problems are from Christa Lemily here, I just made it into a little booklet for their INB. The students were all commenting about how easy it was and how much sense it made. When we completed our town map next, the students were breezing through. I had to show one example about how mathematicians organize their work because we hadn't been showing work before. But conceptually, they did great!

They completed the map with more ease than my students did last year, and these students are classified as "less advanced" than my students were last year. That, to me, says the intro and conceptual booklet worked!! YAY!

Next we calculated distance between points.

When you flip the flap down that says "Calculating Distance Between Two Points" it looks like this...

Yes, I know, the distance formula is not explicitly an 8th grade standard. But if I'm doing distance between points on a coordinate grid why wouldn't I mention it?! We talked about how they would see this formula later and it contains the same math as the Pythagorean Theorem. We color coded the same work in both methods so students could see the connections. Hopefully they'll remember this at least a little next year and go look it up. Fingers crossed!

So there it is, my week of Pythagorean Theorem and distance. Got any helpful critiques or suggestions?

Here are your files:

February 26, 2014

Algebra 1: Unit 7

In an effort to stay more up to date (oops!) I am uploading my latest unit of Algebra pages.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE sequences! That was definitely not the case during the first year that I taught them, but it is now!

We started doing Mathalicious' iPod Depreciation problem. Again, my love for Mathalicious continues to grow! I wanted my students thinking critically about the differences and similarities of linear and exponential functions. There were some awesome debates and lots of wonderful math happening during this problem.

Again, just like in this post, since Mathalicious is a subscription site I covered up the math :( Awesome activity and awesome site!

The next day we used two situations (one linear and one exponential) to talk about how closely related sequences and functions are. We completed these notebook pages.

the arithmetic side flipped open.

the geometric side flipped open.

Today we came back and completed three more problems, then did a card sorting activity. After the students had correctly sorted their cards, they stapled their little packets together and taped the whole thing into their notebook.

This card sorting activity worked wonderfully!! There was one recursive arithmetic, one explicit arithmetic, one recursive geometric, and one explicit geometric. I had many students say this made a world of difference for them. They understood what represented terms, when they were and were not allowed to plug in n-values, and how to recognize the differences between types of sequences. I was little hesitant to do the sorting activity and am SO glad I did! Lots of great math discussion!!

Your copies in case you want them below...

February 23, 2014

Algebra 1: Unit 5

More of the picture dump mentioned here.

Students created scatter plots on these pages based on the data we collected during the first week.

It was fun to use the flip-out "out data" page we created months ago. Remember it here?

Monopoly is from Yummy Math, here.

8th Grade Math: Unit 6

More of the picture dump mentioned here.

Only part way through this unit right now so I'll be adding more pictures soon

Students worked in groups using laptops to locate a picture in real life with parallel lines. They then emailed me that picture, I printed them off real quick, and we went from there. Mine are house blinds :)

8th Grade Math: Unit 5

As mentioned here, this going to be a {relatively} wordless picture dump :)

I introduced systems using Mathalicious lesson called "Flicks"

I reformatted their student handout to fit on notebook pages.

As much as I'd LOVE to show you all the glorious math underneath those Mathalicious icons, I don't feel like I should.

But you should definitely go buy a Mathalicious subscription and check it out!

We did solving graphically, by substitution, and by elimination on three different days.

We filled out the pages seen below "Solving a System of Equations By..." and then did the corresponding areas on the next pages: one solution/no solution/infinitely-many solutions.

We when we took solving graphically notes we also did the solving graphically section of each one/none/infinite page.

After we had all the one/none/infinite pages complete we talked about what we noticed and drew some conclusions.