After reading Christine's two articles and searching the internet for ideas about math, I have come up with some ideas. Unfortunately, I think they block Blogger.com and any other type of forum such as this at our school (I know Google-groups was blocked for a long time till we petitioned to have it unlocked for the Robot club). This makes it more difficult since children who do not have internet access at home cannot do the assignment (cannot use school equipment at lunch or before or after school) (but I could try to use Google-groups instead)
First, I would have an easy, access assignment, say a multiple choice quiz that the students could download (word doc) from my blog page and answer and then submit by emailing me at my special, email address for their class. There would be questions like;
Name_________
True or false: Mr. Clark is the handsomest teacher you have ever seen?
True or false: You love math?
True or false: Mr. Clark’s nose is very small?
A, B, C, D, E, F: Circle the grade you think you will get in the class
Furthermore, I also would have them check out and play some online puzzles and games (show them I am cool and introduce them to some math web sites)
1) http://www.k111.k12.il.us/King/math.htm#Beginning
2) http://www.aplusmath.com/
3) http://www.coolmath.com/
Second: I used to have the students write daily in a diary about today’s lesson (90 minute class), but this does not work well with my 55 minutes classes. So I would have them keep a daily dairy about what they learned in class that day at home on their blogger page. They could look at their class notes to help. I would keep a daily dairy too. My English teacher used to say,” Writing clarifies thought”. This works for math as well.
Third: I found a cool web site, www.HippoCampus.com that actually has an online class for Algebra 1 aligned to our math book! Two or three times a week I would assign as homework the corresponding tutorial from hippocampus as part of the homework. In their diary I expect a summary of the tutorial with details like,”There was a word problem with two students named Buford and Maria who were counting votes”. This way I could know that they at least went and viewed the tutorial.
I would grade their blog pages once or twice a week.
Diary 9/12/09
ReplyDeleteToday Mr. Clark showed us how to solve equations with variables on both sides of the equation. Example 2x+3=4x-5, He showed us that we must collect all of the x's on both sides of the equation by adding or subtracting the x's from one side to the other. We also must collect all of the numbers as we did before. He also showed us how to check our work by plugging in the answer into the original equation and seeing if it was a true statement.
Today we had an online tutorial lesson tutorial lesson. It is multiple choice. The lesson showed us how an equation can be formed from a word problem. The word problem was about two students Mary and Buford who were counting votes, Mary counted 6 votes and there were 11 votes counted in all, how many votes did Buford count? We made the equation x+6=11. Buford counted 5 votes.
Diary 9/12/09
ReplyDeleteToday we solved equations with variables on both sides. i know how to do this already. We collect like terms as we did before, and check our work. We had a tutorial with two students Mary and Buford who counted votes. I guessed the answer of 5 votes for Buford, I didn't need the equation, but Mr. Clark says the problems will get too hard to guess and we need the equation.
Diary 9/12/09
ReplyDeleteToday we solved equations with the x's on both sides of the equation. I got confused. Which side do you start on? Mr. Clark goes too fast. He said something about subtracting the x's with the smaller number first. I went to the tutorial and it helped a lot. The tutorial teaches better than Mr. Clark. I hope Mr. Clark slows down. The tutorial had a word problem about two students Mary and Buford.