Functions and Sequences Math Menu

OH NO!!! It's ZOMBIES!!!

 That's how I get my students attention for this assignment.

My school has a 30 minute intervention and extension time at the end of the day every Tues-Thursday for the 2nd and 3rd quarter. As a math teacher, my team is in charge of the intervention. I created a math menu for each day that reviews past units but focuses on linear functions. Our pacing guide for 7th grade only has the students matching graphs, to tables, and to rules but I tried to make it more challenging by having the students come up with the information from a rule.

On Thursday, I culminated the math menu with a graphing the zombie infection rate for our area, Bailey's Crossroads. To utilize for your own area, google how many residents there are in your county or section of the county (our county is HUGE) and just change the 2nd page. Have fun!

 LINK TO PDF

S.S. Integration into One and Two Step Equations

If you are from Pennsylvania, my guess is you have heard about the Pinkertons before. If you are from the other 49 states or don't teach History then you probably have not heard about them...or at least don't remember what they are famous for.

 In VA, 7th Grade U.S. History's curriculum involves the Homestead Act. I partnered up with my neighboring social studies teacher to create the following activity.

I set it up as a gallery walk where I posted the equations around the room. The equation's variables matched the numbers on their worksheet. The students had to solve every equation to solve the riddle. The riddle reads:

Although, I do not believe a single drop of blood should be shed, call the Pinkertons we need to stop this amalgamated union. To: Henry Clay from: Andrew Carnegie


Link to the PDF

Glyphs

Ok....I know this is going to make me a pariah, but I love...ok maybe too strong of a word...I like professional development days. I like being able to meet new teachers and share ideas and stories. At a recent PD I met an advanced academic teacher that reviews his student's prior knowledge with a drawing glyph. 


Side note: I'll be honest...I have no idea what the correct name for my creation is. I forgot what the guy called it. I call it a glyph because I believe at some point in my life I have heard this activity called that...so if you know what it is called please let me know.


So it got me thinking, what if I used it as a formative/quiz/whatever your school calls a quick test. It completely freaked my students out when I told them they were taking a test today and then gave them a blank piece of paper. The look...priceless. Then I projected each slide question by question so they could rough sketch their monster. At the end, I gave all of the students color pencils and allowed them time to finalize their drawing while going over the questions at a slower pace for my slower test takers.  To show how much of a success it was, one of my quieter students approached me after class and said that was her favorite quiz she ever took and that she didn't feel as stressed as she normally does when she takes a test. Moreover, it was really telling that my students performed better on this assessment then they typically do.  I have used it with Sequences, Properties, and Order of Operations.

Linear Functions with Real World Problems

I have tried to be more cognizant of incorporating real world into my teaching this year. I feel like math is the easiest subject to incorporate this concept into, however it is hard with our pacing. Below I posted a linear functions project that I used with my special education team taught classroom. The students decided what row they wanted to complete and worked in cooperating groups to complete individual projects. *Stay tuned for pictures of completed projects.* This project was designed as a problem based learning project where I gave the students a problem (the row), and they had to research to find the missing pieces of information. We are an IBMYP school, so the students were asked to also present their findings for another grade. When I give projects like this, I typically give the students 1/2 to 1 classes to begin their search, that way I can field immediate questions and confusion and then they must complete it outside of class. They are given 1-1.5 weeks to complete it.