Friday, January 6, 2017

MTBoS My Favorite Thing

Jumping into a new semester and starting as a full time student teacher (ahhhh!) means looking for new ideas/favorite things that I'm excited to implement in the classroom this semester! I'll be teaching Math I and AP Statistics and I can't wait to jump in and get started!

One thing I am always looking for is new ideas and ways to practice that are better than just printing out worksheet after worksheet of exercises. Math I is an EOC course and I know that students need practice with these types of exercises, but I want to do it in a way that incorporates the collaboration and talking about mathematics that I want my students to embrace.

Enter: two-column partner practice. I stole this idea from Julia Finneyfrock who uses it in her geometry classes so this idea can work for lots of different math topics, but I'm planning to start out using it with practicing multi-step equations. The idea is that one partner completes the first column while the second partner is working on the second column. The catch is that the solutions in each corresponding row are the same. Students then compare the answers with their partner and have to talk through any answers that don't match to figure out which solutions are incorrect.


I'm excited about this idea because it allows students to be able to check their own work with a classmate and talk through their mistakes with someone else and have accountability for their misunderstandings. They'll have immediate feedback that something has gone wrong and they'll have to 

I can't wait to try out this idea this semester and see if it can get my Math I students talking and engaging more with each other and math!