Day 8

Today is a PLC day, so we'll only have a 39 minute class.

Instead of an opener, we'll start with our first assessment over Graphing Stories. I'm not sure I like what I've come up with here. As I mentioned in the Day 7 post, I wanted to keep this relatively short (10 minutes or less) and have them demonstrate their knowledge of various parts of graphing stories (verbal descriptions, tables of values, linear equations with domain restrictions).

Well, I think what I have right now is perhaps a bit too complicated and will take a bit too long. I'm guessing this is closer to 15 minutes instead of 10. And, while I like the problem situation, I'm worried it's too "busy" for students. It's hard to tell, because after a week plus of working with these stories, maybe it will be as straightforward for them as it was for me (in my head) when I was thinking about this. If it is, then it's not too busy and they'll cruise right through it. But if they aren't feeling good about graphing stories at this point, I can see them getting lost in all the details. Your thoughts on this assessment would be appreciated as I think about this more.

After the assessment we'll briefly work on point-slope and standard form. I've never been enamored of standard form, but it's an expectation, so we'll touch on it. Point-slope form is trickier, because it's confusing for a lot of students but, once they understand it, it's useful in a lot of situations. Here are my slides for this quick overview. I'm not happy with these either, but perhaps a boring, straightforward quick look is all they need here. (We'll continue working on point-slope the next few lessons.)

For homework they will continue working on the Des-Person assignment they received the previous day.

This is the first day I don't feel pretty good about. I have questions and concerns about the other days (most notably with timing), but overall feel pretty good about them. This day doesn't feel all that good, starting with the shorter class period, the assessment not being quite right, and the lesson being less than inspired. I'm telling myself that not every day can be fantastic, but I'll be thinking about this one a bit more.