10/13 - 10/17

The week of the 13th was the 1st week of our new semester. I am working on brainstorming for projects/activities that I can continue to do this semester. I am really struggling trying to get these new classes up and running. I know that I am extremely busy with taking 3 classes, working, and my son (age 4) taking baseball for the first time, but it seems my students are even more distracted. They could not remember that in a right triangle to find the missing angle to subtract the acute angle from 90. I almost passed out. This is by far one of the weakest groups I have had in a while and will have to devote some time to coming up with activities that really gets them involved and gets them learning.

Week 6: 10/6 - 10/10

This is the week of exams. We have exams Wednesday and Thursday. I hope to try a creative way to review some topics with the classes this week. I thought about having the trig students make connections between the topics using several strategies. Concepts has to write as part of their exam and I am working with them to take on a different role in their writing of the problems. They could "be the x in the radicand" and talk about how they want to be alone and what they have to go through to be alone. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

Week 5: 9/29 - 10/3

The Advanced Algebra and Trig students are working on their projects. They are due on 10/9 so I will be able to discuss more about how my 1st big venture into creativity went. They seem to struggle with how to approach finding the information more than the creative aspect of presenting the material in a non-traditional way. Several have saught help from other teachers to understand the research they are finding. I have received cds of songs they wrote about their mathematicians, story books, and power points of short stories. We will compile the presentations together chronologically to be presented.

Concepts of Algebra is working on writing more. I am having them analyze problems that may be "worked wrong" to determine mistakes that may have been made and then teach the student that made the mistake how to better understand the problem. I have several ideas to try next semester with both of the classes as we move into other material.

Week 4: 9/22 - 9/26

I am trying to incorporate as much creativity as possible. I am finding it more difficult as our semester comes to an end when I am pushed to finish the material for county "benchmark" exams and for final exams. We have 9 week semesters rather than 18 so it often gets difficult to incorporate lessons or projects toward the end of the semester.
An update on what my classes have been working on. The trig classes are working on their projects. Several are still having a difficult time really getting into their creative presentation of their material. I do have some doing skits, short stories, and even a music video. We hope to pull it all together electronically as kind of a yearbook for the last 400 years of mathematics. The projects are due next week, so I hope to have some ideas on how to tweak the project next time to make it more creative. In the concepts classes, they struggled so hard to not repeat rules or explanations that I may have used. We had explanations dealing with football and gaining and losing yards. We had holes and mounds of sand on the beach representing positive and negative numbers. I had a student use her checkbook and printed out deposit slips and withdrawal forms to illustrate adding and subtracting. I was really impressed with how some of the students really got into making sure their "friend" understood how to add and subtract integers and what it really means.

I have several ideas planned for next mini-semester which starts Oct. 13th. Next week won't leave much room for new activities or projects with exams, but we will pick back up on the week after.