Super Spectacular Secondary Mathletes Giveaway!

A few months ago a group of teacher-authors from TeachersPayTeachers connected with each other and formed a collaborative group named the Secondary Mathletes. You all have been so supportive of all of us that it is time for us to give back to you! We are pleased to announce that we have come together to create a giveaway as a thank you for all of your support. Two lucky winners will receive a bundle of wonderful activities, games and resources that you can use in the first few weeks of school!  Each teacher-author has provided a short description of their resource and you can find links to their TpT stores as well as to the product itself!  Please enter the giveaway using the rafflecopter at the bottom!  The drawing will be open until July 18th!

1) From the SecondaryMathShop. I have included my Geometry Beginning Concepts Vocabulary Matching Activity. This activity is designed to serve a few purposes including reinforcing the foundational vocabulary from geometry, help students who are struggling with the vocabulary to visualize the terms and to help students review for an upcoming test. Included you will find four types of cards to match - - a term, a diagram, a name (label) and a definition - - as well as answer sheet! There are so many ways to use this activity!

2) From Hodges Herald. I have included my Multiplying and Dividing Fractions Bingo. Use this game to get your students back into mathematical thinking.  Students get to chose how to set up their Bingo boards which helps them to practice organization as well as how to write fractions.  A fun way to review previously learned concepts. This bingo game using Task Cards. Great for small groups or whole class. Self Correcting and loads of fun!

3) From Lindsay Perro. I have included my Back to School Math Activities for Middle School. We all know summer passes quickly! Some of your students will return to school eager and ready to learn, others will be hesitant to get back in the swing of things and will still be holding on to their summer! This packet includes 9 questionnaires, ice breakers and activities for back to school. 

4) From Live, Love, Math. I have included my Integer Operations Seating Cards. This file includes a set of 30 seating cards (4 to a page). Each card has an order of operations problem involving integers which the student will solve in order to find his/her seat in the classroom. I have my desks numbered 1-30 and this is how I set up my seating chart at the beginning of the year or anytime I want to change seats. Each problem has a unique solution, so it is a good discussion starter when you see two students trying to sit in the same seat or in this case, trying to find a negative seat! All answers are positive.These problems do include negative numbers as well as exponents and all four operations. Some are harder than others, so you can give some of the easier ones to kiddos who haven't mastered the skill yet in order to give them a confidence boost. There are also two blank cards in case you have a class larger than 30.

5) From Scaffolded Math and Science. I have included my Interactive Notebook: Solving Algebra Equations. This download includes 8 pocket flippables showing the solving process of 8 different equations. Once put together, each pocket holds a series of different-sized cards that align to show the steps of solving. On the bottoms of each card (out of sight when the cards are all in place) are explanations for each step. Students can add each card to its pocket while reading why each step was taken to solve the equation. 

6) From Teaching High School Math. I have included my Algebra - Line Them Up - Solving Two Step Equations. In this activity, students are each given a task card with a solving two step equations problem and a QR Code. Students are given a couple of minutes to solve their problem. Then they are invited to get up and
arrange themselves in order of their solutions from smallest to largest. After they think they have themselves in order, the teacher walks by and scans their QR Codes. The teacher announces the solution on each card. If students are lined up correctly, they win! This is a great activity for the beginning of school because it gives students a chance to interact in a non-threatening way. It gives you the opportunity to see who your leaders will be. This activity would probably best be used in a Geometry class where all students have already learned to solve equations.

7)  From All Things Algebra.  I have included my Order of Operations, Evaluating Expressions, One-Step Equations Review.  Rolling review activities are perfect way to have students work together, yet work on their own problems. Students love to roll the dice to choose the problems, and are amazed that two different problems can have the exact same answer. The matching answers also provide a means of self checking. This particular rolling review activity contains order of operations, evaluating expressions, and one-step equations. This would make a terrific back to school review to brush up on some basic skills!

8) From MissMathDork. I have included my How to be a Good Mathematician - 14 colorful posters for your classroom! So many students don't know what it means to be a Good Mathematicians These 14 bright and colorful posters serve as a constant reminder! Included in this product:

*14 bright and colorful posters
*14 colorful, but more printer friendly posters - these also print beautifully in black and white without losing the details
*A handout for your students to keep close at hand to remind them of the qualities of a Good Mathematician. (The handout is available in 4 colors, and one printer friendly version)



9) From To the Square Inch - Kate Bing Coners. I have included my Scientific Notation Guided notes and Task Cards CCS: 8.EE.A.4. This product is designed to help students learn, apply and practice the concept of Scientific Notation. I have included in this product:
*Scientific Notation Notes
*Scientific Notation to Standard Form Notes
*Products and Quotients in Scientific Notation Notes
*20 Scientific Notation Task Cards
*Recording Sheet
*Science Connection Worksheet

10) From Lessons withe Coffee. I have included my Print and Go Interactive Math Bulletin Board {Boggle}. This edition of the P&G Bulletin Boards is Boggle. Students are given instructions and a worksheet to write down answers on. Once this wall is set up, not only do you have a beautiful wall, but you also have a conversation starter. For this particular game students are to pick two numbers and simply add or subtract them. YOU CHOOSE what numbers to use. I have decimals on mine, but I will change to fractions after one week. The idea is that you change the numbers each week. This could be money, whole numbers, integers, absolute values, square roots, or exponents. HECK! Throw in some expressions with variables to add! This set includes:
**BOGGLE header – KG Wake Me Up**
**Directions Letters – KG Cold Coffee (My Current favorite font!)
**Student Direction Bubbles
**16 Star bursts with white box for writing numbers
**“Boggle Work Sheet” File folder sign
**Boggle Work Sheet

We are giving away a bundle to two  lucky winners so enter below!!! :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

"Noise" In A Classroom - It's Not Always A Bad Thing!

When I first starting teaching (oh so many years ago!), I wanted a quiet classroom.  Almost to the level of hearing a pin drop.  Why?  Simple.  A quiet classroom, in my mind, was a sign of great classroom management.  It meant that my students were engaged, working and I was in control of the room.  I dreaded the question "can we work together" because working together leads to noise, noise leads to chaos and chaos lead to bad classroom management.  While I was right about chaos equaling bad management, I have learned that I was very wrong about the rest.  Noise and chaos are not the same thing.

A few years ago, as I got more comfortable as a teacher, as a part of the staff and with my subject matter I started relaxing a little and exploring other classroom structures.  I found that when a teacher structures it correctly and with strong expectations in place from the beginning, student collaboration can be one of the most powerful tools a teacher can use!  The key, I have found, is to start small at the beginning of a year or a term, before jumping into stations or collaborations that require a great deal of movement around the classroom.  I would describe the progression like this:

Step one:  Establish clear communication with your students about what your expectations are when they are talking to each other, participating in a classroom discussion or engaging in a group activity.  The clearer you are about what you expect, the easier it is to control the classroom and the students without requiring silence.  

Step two:  Start with small discussion pieces that are short and structured.  I will ask students to turn to their neighbor and complete an example problem together and then pick a random pair to come to the board to do it for the class.  This serves several purposes:

      ** It sets a time limit and destination (solving the problem), 
      ** It gives them clear direction for their talking
      ** It allows me to rotate and hear what they are talking about
      ** It gives me insight into whether they understand what we are doing (and I can correct it with questioning immediately)
      ** It involves all students since they don't know who will be called to go to the front board.

Partner Worksheet

Fold It Up

A great resource that I have found that helps to transition from this step to the next is made by Teaching High School Math called "Algebra Solving Equations Partner Worksheets".  In this activity students are paired up.  Each student works their problems individually, then they compare answers (which are the same even though they did different equations!) and talk through them if their answers don't match!  

I also really like a resource that I found by Live Love Math called "Fold It Up - Multistep Equations Practice"  It has students create a foldable and solve problems at the same time!  This is great for getting students talking and to break out of the mold of stand and deliver for note-taking.  

Step three:  Do an activity that requires small movement and group collaboration.  Task cards or investigation activities are fantastic for this!  I like using task cards because they can be used so many ways.  You can have the students pass the task cards from pair to pair or between small groups.  Additionally, you can set-up the task cards at stations and have groups of students rotate from station to station.  I also like investigation activities at this point because they require interaction, collaboration and hands-on learning but don't have to require students to be up and moving if your students aren't ready.

Congruent Triangles

Left, Right, Answer

I feature a few investigation activities in my TpT Store including Cut and Paste Activities.  One of my favorites is on Proving Triangles Congruent.  In it, students work in small groups to identify the method or methods being used to prove the triangles congruent and then cut them out and paste them under headings.  The discussion and collaboration that comes out of this is amazing.  I have included it in a money saving bundle that includes proof practice as well.

Task cards are fantastic!  I cannot say enough how much I love them!  They break concepts down into small tasks, help students to focus in on specific topics and encourage great collaboration.  One of my favorite ways to take task cards to the next level is made by 4mulafun called "Left, Right, Answer".  It turns using task cards into a game and more!  (You can check out a blog post about how to use them here.)

Step four:  This is usually the final step.  At this point your students are used to talking to each other and know what your expectations are when they do so.  They are (usually)  pretty good at keeping the noise level at a reasonable level and staying focused.  At this point you can really start having fun.  You can do activities that require large movement such as relay races, gallery walks where instead of tasks being at centers, they are posted on the walls and students are in almost constant movement. Getting to this point really is my favorite place.  I LOVE to see my students up, moving, interacting, collaborating and just generally getting to experience how much fun math can be.

Relay Race

I have seen so many products on TeachersPayTeachers that work here so well.   All Things Algebra has a fantastic relay race on Solving Systems of Equations.  This activity has students checking each others work and racing to get it done. I love it because the students have to not only be able to complete their part but also have to be able to look over the work of others to make sure it is correct!   Prizes could definitely be involved.  

Miss Math Dork has relay races where students do problems and draw a part of a figure.  One of my favorites covers the topic of Circumference and Area of Circles around a circus theme!  Which even team gets the circus scene drawn first, wins!  And as we all know, middle and high school students love competition and prizes! :)  She also has templates so that you can make your own!  

No matter what pace you take it at, collaboration and communication between not only teacher and student, but student to student as well is of critical importance.  I look back at those first few years and wonder why I thought I had to have a silent class to have control of it!  What do you do to encourage collaboration and communication?  What are some of your favorite activities?

Reviewing Beyond A(nother) Worksheet

After all the days of teaching a unit, doing practice work, quizzes and other formative assessments I find that I need to change it up a little bit for the review before an assessment. I have explored many different methods and want to share a few of my favorites with you. The results will of vary depending on the make-up of your class and how well they can keep the noise level down when being up and moving around!

My first favorite is to use station activities. Station activities can be designed in multiple ways. I have done some stations where students complete task cards at each station that focus on different skills or concepts for the unit. For example, I just finished a unit in Algebra on functions. My students had a station activity where each of the five stations focused on major skills - 1) finding the domain and range from a table/graph/mapping and identify whether it not it was a function, 2) evaluating functions, 3) writing a function rule from a table, 4) find the domain and range from a graph, and 5) applying functions to create distance time graphs. I found that this worked well because they were focusing in on one concept at a time and I could quickly identify if there were gaps or holes in their knowledge.

I have also done station activities where different stations actually have them completing tasks. I did one where one station has them going online (usually using i-pads) to look up a topic, one station had them constructing something out of pipe cleaners, another had them doing a matching activity, and two were problem solving. This type usually works better in a more visual class like Geometry. Regardless of the type that you use, make sure that you have a timer displayed and that students know the direction of rotation. Also, make sure to build in rotation time when you are planning out the lesson.

My second favorite form of review is to use a review game such as BINGO or Jeopardy. I especially like using BINGO in a unit that is identification heavy be it from vocabulary or diagrams. My students enjoy it because they get to a) compete, b) win prizes and c) be noisy! When setting up a BINGO game make sure that you either laminate your cards so that can be reused or have the students create their cards themselves. While I don't use Jeopardy as often, the times that I have I found that my students really enjoy it. The only drawback that I have yet to overcome is how to have students "buzz" in.

It was from this drawback and I discovered my favorite review game of all time to play in the classroom...KAHOOT! :) I love this game. My students love this game! It is a win-win situation all around. The game is free and if you search on the website there are ready made "Kahoots" already created that you can download and edit to suit your needs. The two essential requirements are a board to broadcast on and devices (i-pads, computers, phones) that can connect to the internet. It is an online game. Whenever I mention Kahoot my students get excited. They enjoy it so much that they ask if we can play. A really wonderful feature of Kahoot is that you can download the results and save them so that you can use it as a form of assessment or a record of their knowledge gained. Are there still units that I use a paper and pencil review on? Of course there because a review game or station activity won't fit every unit. But they are not always my go-to anymore. I still always create on though in case the technology goes down and so that absent students can still have a review to use to prepare for the assessment. How do you review?

It's not a "sin" to do Trigonometry, It's a "Sine" of new content!

One of the biggest jokes in my class when I teach the Right Triangles and Trigonometry unit in my Geometry class is how to pronounce "sin".  I inevitable end up telling my students (jokingly of course) when they pronounce it as "sin" and not "sine" that it is not a sin to do Geometry.  Most of them giggle and then we discuss how to properly pronounce Geometric terms. 

One of the biggest problems I find in my Geometry class is a students inability to define the terms.  I cannot begin to count the number of times that I found it necessary in past years to redefine terms that we have already covered multiple times (think alternate interior angles versus consecutive interior angles).  Since vocabulary is so important in both general content and problem solving as well as on state testing I decided to talk the issue head on.

So in that spirit I want to share with you my top four ways to reinforce Geometrical vocabulary and to help students to retain it beyond a single unit.

Geometry B Bundle

Geometry A Bundle

1)  Illustrate, illustrate, illustrate!   I have embarked on a quest to illustrate our terms whenever possible.  I created sets of posters for every unit that we will study throughout the entire course.  Each poster is 8.5 by 11 and includes the definition, a labeled illustration and and pertinent facts.  I print them on card stock, laminate and hang them around the round grouped by unit.  I leave them up the entire trimester and refer to them constantly.  (I have them in my TeachersPayTeachers store in money saving bundles).

Triangles and Congruency

2)  Practice leads to retention!   I start every unit by asking my students to complete a vocabulary assignment (I usually give it to them as their assignment to complete after finishing the prior unit assessment).  Each vocabulary assignment includes a few pages where students give the definition, an illustration if necessary and any prior knowledge they might have.  I also include a crossword puzzle and a word search.  The students enjoy usually enjoy doing these assignments since it helps to give them a preview of what the unit will be covering. We refer back to these vocabulary lists as the unit goes on and students refine their definitions as the unit progresses. 

Congruency Vocabulary Activity

Early Concepts Bingo

3)  Play games or do activities!  Whenever possible I do vocabulary activities or play vocabulary games with my students.  I created some cut, paste and match activities for my students that require them to match the term, definition, a diagram and a label.  The students LOVE doing these.  It helps to tie all of the pieces together for them!  Additionally, we play vocabulary bingo games too.  I play one of two ways.  I either give them cards that are the terms or cards that are a diagram of the term.  Depending on what I gave them as a card, I will either read the term, read the definition or a project a diagram of the term.  We also play Kahoot (this does require you to have access to either I-Pads or smartphones and a projector or smart-board with internet access) which is the best online game to play I have seen in many years of teaching. 

4)  Get the students talking about the vocabulary and using it correctly!  I'm pretty sure that at times my students are either rolling their eyes when I'm not looking or thinking I'm slightly strange but I do not let them get away with skipping over the vocabulary during classroom discussions.  I ask them questions like "why can you do that" or "what geometry concept is being illustrated/applied" leading them back to the vocabulary all the time.  "Tell me why" is so commonly said in my classroom that after a couple of weeks I find students saying "wait, let me tell you why" or asking each other why!  I love it when it works!

Whatever works the best for you, embrace it!  The more you can get the students to understand the why, the what and the how behind what they are doing, the better they get at it!  In my opinion, students need to use mathematical vocabulary to truly retain the material. 

How To Assess Student Comphrehension and Have Fun at the Same Time!

As a secondary math teacher I am always on a quest to find ways to not only assess my students' knowledge but to also engage them as I do it.  I have researched various techniques looking for ones that encourage collaboration, assess knowledge and allow students to communicate mathematically.  The incorporation of these activities helps me to shift my room from the more traditional teacher center to one that is more student centered.

Right Triangles Vocabulary Matching

The first technique that I use addresses the variety of new vocabulary that arrives in Geometry and helps students to connect the pieces that go along with those terms including the definition, diagrams and ways to label the diagrams.  I have created a series of vocabulary matching activities for various units including triangles and congruency, right triangles and trigonometry, quadrilaterals, beginning concepts and circles.  Each activity includes a set of teacher instructions, a student answer sheet, cards for the term, definition, diagram and label (when applicable).  The activities encourage students to work collaboratively and are also great for use in station activities!

Beginning Concepts Bingo

The second technique, Bingo Games, also address not only vocabulary but also the ability to hear a definition or description out loud and make the connection to the terms/concepts.  These are also great fun!  I have made them for various units including triangles and congruency, right triangles and trigonometry, quadrilaterals, beginning concepts and circles.  Each Bingo game includes two sets of 32 cards - one with the term and one with diagrams, two different teacher call sheets and the cover squares as well.

Task Card Bundle

The third technique that I use is task cards.  Task cards allow students to focus in on just one problem at a time and can be written at different questioning levels which allows for differentiation and for students to work at their level of understanding.  They also allow you to identify where students may be having difficulty without the students feeling overwhelmed.  I currently have five sets of tasks cards that can be purchased individually or in a money saving bundle.  I have many more sets planned!  

Geometry Riddle Bundle

The last technique that I use is riddle worksheets.  Riddle worksheets are worksheets that have the students working through a puzzle as they solve problems.  Riddle worksheets are usually 15 - 18 questions where each answer corresponds to a letter in the answer to the riddle.  I love them so much that I currently have 22 riddle worksheets covering the major topics in Geometry and 7 for Algebra!  The Geometry riddle worksheets can be purchased individually in a money saving bundle. 

I am investigating new techniques as well including formative assessment, group projects and station activities!  I will share them with you a future post so stay tuned!