Pythagorean Theorem - A New Intro!

I've never started Pythagorean with an investigation like this before and so far I'm loving it!!

I got the awesome idea from Christa Lemily at BetterLesson.com. Here's her wonderful stuff.

I've always talked about the two leg lengths squared and we've even gotten blocks out before, but I've never had students determine if it's a right triangle on the first day using this method. We haven't named what we're doing as the "Pythagorean theorem" yet, but we're using it and it's converse.

We did this on the same day that students were finishing a retest opportunity so I had kiddos in all different places. I posted on the board that once they completed their retest they needed to go to bit.ly/righttriangle. From there they scrolled through the pictures and were self-guided.

Here's a fun desk picture from yesterday!! :)

Starting our pythagorean investigation today! Fun, fun stuff!!! #mtbos #mathchat @gowjhswildcats pic.twitter.com/VbKRImtQmY
— Jessie Hester (@MrsHestersMath) March 10, 2014

UPDATE:

Part 2 is here.

Organizing Resources

Do you ever have those days where one or all classes make you feel like What the heck am I even accomplishing here?!?!?! Yeah... today was one of those days... Anyway, on to something positive, right?! :)

As I become more and more active in my online PLN, I am constantly amazed and thankful for the wonderful resources being shared. Now, how do I keep up with and make these things useful?! Isn't that the million dollar question. I know we all have our own system, but I wanted to given an overview of what is currently working for me in case anyone needs a starting place.

Up until about a month ago I wasn't a big Diigo fan. Boy was I missing out!! If you haven't played around with Diigo I definitely encourage you to do so! I had been finding resources through blogs I follow and twitter. Those are my two main sources. I was then creating Pinterest pins of everything I wanted to save. Now, this system is not horrible, it just wasn't working well as I collected more and more resources. My pinterest boards are getting very large and searching for a particular document/activity/foldable was becoming cumbersome. You know what dreaded feeling I've seen something awesome for this... now where did I put it??????

I have a FANTASTIC principal who is very knowledgeable and is helping our staff become more intentional with our PLN time and how we find/organize all our resources. He introduced me to Diigo back in the fall but I didn't fall in love with it then - I am now a Diigo lover. Here's what I'm doing and loving with Diigo...

I find a resource anywhere on the internet and save it to my Diigo library. I tag everything I save by the content, ie: quadratics, linear function, point-slope, residuals, etc. I also use the tags "inb" and "activity" to signify which things are more useful for interactive notebook pages and which are more classroom activities. As I'm finding things online I'm saving and tagging everything useful to Diigo. I may not need it now but I'll probably need it soon. For example, when planning this last unit for Math-8, I went to my Diigo library and filtered by the tag "pythagorean." It looked like this...

I can click on any of those links and quickly access the the resources. I can also quickly see I have three things that might be good class activities, one that might be fun in a challenge packet, and one that relates the Pythagorean Theorem to the distance formula. Score!!

Like I said, I've only really be using and loving Diigo for about a month. My library and tagging system is growing quickly. There will probably be many more resources than just 4 in this area soon. :)

Now, no judging as I'm getting ready to be transparent and share :) Here is the link to my Diigo library in case you want to poke around and see how I've set mine up. https://www.diigo.com/user/jhester I'd love if you left a link in the comments below to your Diigo library if you use one. Or, please let me know how you organize and manage all your resources. I'd love to learn a few tricks from you!

Also, here's my principal's library in case you need to see how the masters use Diigo :) https://www.diigo.com/user/timsparacino Now, don't be overwhelmed or intimidated like I first was; he'll be the first to tell you his is 10 years in the making!

Alright, time to go play with the pup for the evening. How can you resist this sweet face?!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Keep Me Sane!

We as teachers have all kinds of tricks to keep ourselves sane and maximize time in our classes. I thought I'd share a few of mine with you today. I know these are fairly common tricks among teachers, but here's my take on them.

#1. I don't pass out anything out. Almost ever.
As kids enter my room I always have my projector set to a "First Things First" list. This tells them exactly what they need to pick up and do before the tardy bell rings. This usually includes things like ruler, 3 markers, scissors, papers from the counter, etc.

#2. I don't pass out anything out. Almost ever.
Sounds familiar?! Ha! Right next to their supplies area is their mailbox crates, as they have been named. My school has block scheduling so I teach three classes each day. These are my "b day" class numbers. If you spin the crates around 180 degrees the signs then read "2, 3, 4" for my "a day" classes. Every student has a hanging file with their name. After I have graded any work it goes in their file. It is their responsibility to check their files. Some students also store their INBs in their files if they don't need them that night. This is rare though.

#3. Welcome Back forms.
Whenever a student is absent I fill out one of these forms. I usually do this at the beginning of class while I take roll and students are working on their warm up. It is a wonderful little form! All the stuff for the day gets stapled to it, I often staple a seminar pass to it so students can come and get extra help on what they missed. The whole stapled package then goes in their files from #2. Here's an example from a recent absence.

When they return, they grab it and know exactly what they need to turn in and complete. No more asking the blood-boiling question "what did I miss?" Or even better "did we do anything when I was absent?" What is that question, by the way?!?! No, we all just sat around the mourned the loss of you. HA! Anyway...

#4. Turn in numbers.
These might be my favorite part of my classroom. seriously. They should probably have been #1, oh well. Save the best for last? Anyway...
These are pockets like these and these that I ordered my first year of teaching. They have held up wonderfully!!! Including through four classroom moves.

Mine are four separate organizers with nine pockets each. I have the pockets labeled #1-28, class periods for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and then two empty pockets. My students are each assigned a number alphabetically and that's how they turn in all homework. You can see very slightly in the top right corner of the picture a piece of paper taped to the wall. This is a class list for each class with students' number, just in case they forget. When I tell students to turn in their work they walk over, put it in their pocket, and sit back down. I can instantly see who turned in their work and who didn't and *best part* it's alphabetized! I grab the papers out in order and I'm ready to go straight to my grade book. After my grade book, I head to the student mailboxes (#2) which are also in alphabetical order and quickly drop the work in the appropriate file. Easy!

Also, the class period pockets on the bottom two rows are for late/absent/redo work. Anything that my students turn in as a class goes in their personal numbers #1-28. Anything that isn't being turned in as a group goes in the class period numbers. This is confusing to them a little at first, but after a couple weeks of training during the start of the year they've got it. As I mentioned in my retesting post, my students are continuously fixing and correcting assignments. My pocket system really helps me manage. Throughout the day students are putting things in their class period numbers. Some even run in real quick from the hallway between other classes to drop work off. They never even have to find me - just drop their papers! At the end of each day this is typically what it looks like...

I just grab all the work for each class period. I then know which class period to go to grade book and which mailbox crate to head to. Yay for saving time!

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...

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.

I tied the one/none/infinite of systems to the one/none/infinite scales we did back here.

This worked really well for most students.

We wrapped up the unit with a Systems Project seen below.