February 25, 2022
For today’s warm-up, we looked at an activity called Always, Sometimes, Never. Students were given mathematical scenarios and they were required to justify mathematically if the answer was always, sometimes, or never. Below are some student examples.
Next, we talked about plotting points on a graph given a table of values. This led to a nice discussion about what features are important to make a high-quality graph. We talked about labeling the axes, including labels, connecting the dots, including a title, the importance of a consistent scale, and why we need to use a ruler.
We then switched gears and looked at evaluating expressions. We looked at two examples that evaluated expressions with rational numbers.
Next, we looked at several numbers, and students were asked what operation could be performed with those numbers. This led to another great discussion about what happens when we take the square root of a negative number. Since this was my pre-IB class, I went ahead and talked about this abstract concept with them. I’m pretty sure I blew their minds a bit, but when it is talked about in future math classes, they will at least have been introduced to it.
This led to our last topic of the day which was determining Like Terms. Students were given the task of organizing terms that were like into appropriate categories. I like to use a chart to help organize polynomials into their like terms.
This brought us to the end of our lessons for today.
We had a few minutes left, so I assigned the following Boom decks reviewing concepts from yesterday.
The Order of Operations puzzle required students to drag and drop the correct operation between the given integers to make the answer true.
The other Classifying Numbers Boom Deck was a multiple choice activity, where students correctly classified the given number on the real number system.
That brought us to the end of the period.
I hope something here was able to help you on your teaching journey.
Have a great day!