Day 17

We continue our work with Systems of Linear Equations.

Our opener will be Basketball Shots 2 (the sequel to their homework assignment)

Our lesson will include working through Atomic Weights (probably together), then the Types of Solutions activity builder, and then solving a couple of systems by both substitution and elimination for practice.

For homework they will decide when it might be best to use substitution and when it might be best to use elimination.

Day 16

Today's opener will be a short review of solving a system of equations by substitution.

Then we'll use this Activity Builder to start talking about solving systems by elimination. I tried combining (and tweaking slightly) two activity builders that I thought went well together, but I'm a bit worried it might be too much for the roughly 50 minutes I'm hoping to give for it. Your thoughts are appreciated.

Their homework will be a solving systems by elimination problem involving atomic weights. This might be a stretch for them, especially if we they don't have any class time to start on it (and I hope they do). That's partially why I'm not making this one a screencast (the other part of that partial is just to give them a break from making screencasts.)

Update: Changed the homework to Basketball Shots and moved the atomic weights to part of the lesson the next day. Just felt like it was a bit too complicated to give them that quickly.

Day 15

We'll start with an opener that eases them into solving systems of equations by substitution.

We'll then complete the On The Road Again Activity Builder to learn more about systems.

Their assignment will be to record a screencast discussing solving a system by substitution.

Day 14

We'll start with a short assessment over function notation and application.

We'll then begin looking at Systems of Equations using the Racing Dots Activity Builder.

Their assignment will be to complete the Playing Catch Up Activity Builder.

Day 12

Today we'll start talking about informal lines of best fit (soon to lead to correlation regression, and causation).

We'll start with an opener that practices solving an equation using function notation.

We'll then work two through Activity Builders, Line of Best Fit and then Air Travel (based on Dan Meyer's post from what seems a long time ago).

For homework I'll have them complete a short reading assignment (as well as look at some spurious correlations), then write a short summary of a second article (their choice).

Day 11

Today is all about learning function notation as well the difference between continuous and discrete functions.

Our opener will review figuring out whether a relation is a function from a graph of the relation.

 

Then we'll complete Function Notation on Activity Builder. My goal is to expose them to function notation, including solving when given either the independent or dependent variable, talk about continuous vs. discrete, and then do a couple of application problems.

For homework they will complete a similar application problem and record a screencast explaining it. In addition, I'll ask them to do a small additional amount of homework by gathering some data that we'll use in class on Friday (for an activity based on Dan Meyer's Air Travel).

Day 7

Slightly shorter class period today (53 minutes) because it's an advisory day.

We'll start with an opener called Sloping Letters, which helps them review the idea of positive, negative, zero and undefined slope.

 

We will then go over a homework screencast and talk about their first assessment tomorrow. This assessment will be over Graphing Stories and will ask them to put together what they know about verbal descriptions, tables of values, linear equations with domain restrictions, and Desmos. I'll explain to them my assessment philosophy and how I will give them an adequate amount of time for the assessment, but not unlimited (therefore they should be prepared). The actual assessment will include a link to a Desmos graph (or possibly Activity Builder, haven't constructed it yet). Right now (may change after I construct it), they will complete the problem, then take a screenshot and upload that to formative. I anticipate giving them about 10 minutes for the problem, but we'll see.

Today's lesson will be a combination of Polygraph Lines and my version of Des-Person/Winking Man Part 1 (part 1 because I'm hoping to create a part 2 and maybe 3 after we do quadratics later in the year). I'm hoping this will be a fun way to reinforce what we've done, including having them focus on some vocabulary (slope, intercept, quadrants, etc.) as well as domain restrictions.

Their homework will be to prepare for the assessment tomorrow (so no screencast), as well as their own Des-Person assignment that will be due on Friday (if I'm on track, today is Tuesday, assessment will be tomorrow on Wednesday, we don't have class on Thursday).

Day 6

Today we revisit Graphing Stories and the MARS task Interpreting Distance-Time Graphs, but this time we will write linear equations for all the stories that have all linear components - even if they are piecewise.

The opener will review how to find the y-intercept when you aren't given it but, instead, are given the slope and a point, or more often two points and you have to calculate the slope first.

We will then discuss one of the student's homework screencasts from the previous class.

Today's lesson will work through the Activity Builder Graphing Stories Part 2. This will solidify our ability to connect descriptions, tables of values and graphs, and then to be able to write equations for those graphs (including domain restrictions for piecewise functions). As part of this we will need to utilize solving for the y-intercept since we won't always have that for the different pieces of our graph.

For homework they will complete one more graphing story and record a screencast with their thinking. The hope is that by the end of this lesson they are feeling very comfortable with everything related to graphing stories, including writing equations for linear data.

Day 2

Since my first day with my Algebra students is a Friday (their second day of school, but Algebra doesn't meet on Thursdays), I sort of feel like Day 2 is my "real" first day with students. My first unit is "Everything Linear", and I want to really hit hard the ideas of relation (and eventually function) and rate of change, while liberally sprinkling in modeling. While it's hard to tell exactly what my students will have had mathematically before me, most of them theoretically will already know how to solve equations, have learned about slope/rate of change, and already done quite a bit of graphing using slope-intercept. (I meet with that incoming 9th grader this Wednesday, so I may have to revisit this statement later this week.)

This day's opener is based on Dan Meyer's 3-Act Sugar Packets. Right now I'm experimenting with Formative and, since I'll be assigning it to my class, I can't link to it so that you can see it. Hopefully these screen shots will give you an idea.

I thought this was an interesting way to start and hopefully immediately engaging. In the past, I've used this as a lesson activity, so I do have some concern that it might be "too much" for an opener. (I also wish Formative allowed a "page break" so that students could enter their estimates, click next, then see the information necessary to solve it exactly; worried they'll scroll down before making estimates.)

Then I decided a great lesson to start with was a Desmos Activity Builder remix of Dan Meyer's Graphing Stories. (FYI - you will be seeing a lot of Desmos and Dan Meyer in subsequent posts.)

I really like how this gets students to think about the relation between two variables in an informal way, yet one that leads to more formal mathematics pretty nicely. Because Desmos recently added the ability to sketch, it fits nicely into Activity Builder. (They are apparently working on the ability to embed videos, right now I just link to them.) I'm reasonably happy with the way this worked out, but am still debating if including all 10 of them is too much. I scaffold the first two, asking them to stop after their sketches so that we can compare everyone's sketches, then turn them loose after that. I think that they'll be able to run with it, but not sure.

Their homework (which hopefully they will get to start on in class - I think I will cut the lesson short if I have to to make sure that happens), is to complete one more graphing story, then record a short screencast describing how they went about coming up with their solution. This will be their first attempt at a "production" screencast (if all goes well they will have practiced on Friday), and I'll make sure to let them know that if they have trouble at first, we'll work through it and that I expect by the end of the week everyone will be able to smoothly make screencasts. (Having the ability to come in on an unscheduled hour will be really helpful here for any students who are really struggling with the screencasts at first.)

This sounds like a great day in my head, but what are your thoughts? Would love to hear feedback, suggested tweaks, or alternatives. (Day 2 Slides)