Cartesian Cartoons

  I was actually looking for one thing and stumbled across this web site instead.  Its called Cartesian Cartoons and is filled with great graphing activities.

All the graphing activities are free and are geared for Pre-Algebra and Algebra classes.  These actually require the student to plot points to create a cartoon image which can be colored in later on to make a hang-able picture.

There are three different sections of graphs available.

1.  Graphs that require only the first quadrant.  The suggested ages for this group is the 3rd to 5th graders.  I suspect these could also be used for low performing students who need extra practice in learning to graph.  Some of the pictures when finished are  bugs, snails, animals and ice cream.  Each of these can easily be colored in when finished.

2.  This group has a variety of tongue in cheek humorous puzzles such as a dinosaur who needs to loose weight, a rocket, a duck and about 32 more puzzles students can have fun with.  These puzzles use all four quadrants of the Cartesian coordinate systems. Check out the titles including Granny's cell and you'll love them.

3.  The last group is the themed one.  You can find puzzles for the first day of school, Halloween, Christmas, Valentines day, and a variety of others.  There is a Valentines one I enjoy that is about loving math.  yeah. 

This site is designed to make graphing fun by having students create these drawings.  In a sense its like those old paint by number kits that my mother tried.  If you follow the numbers correctly, you have a beautiful creation when finished.

The other thing about this site is that you can download either numbered graph paper or unnumbered graph paper to use with your students.  In addition, if you create a cartoon, you can share it with this site.  The material is protected and only to be used by the teacher in the classroom or by home schools.  It cannot be reproduced anywhere else.

So if you are looking for fun graphing activities, check this site out.

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day to everyone.  This picture is perfect for me because I woke up to blowing snow and nasty cold weather.  It warmed my heart.

Tomorrow, I"ll share a site with lovely cartesian coordinate graphing for holiday pictures.

Green Highlighter Activity

I stumbled across this activity while researching teaching radicals.  I loved the idea and can see using it any class for anything from warm-ups and bell ringers to daily work to exit tickets.  Everything!  With just a small modification, it can be used with digital devices.

I found it on the Simplify with Me and the author modified it from Square Root of Negative One Math.  The idea is pretty cool.

1.  Assign a few problems.

2.  A student finishes the assigned work.  The work is checked by the teacher.  If it is correct, the student is given a green pen or highlighter.  If not the student tries again.

3.  The student takes the green highlighter or pen and goes around to help other students.

4. As other students get the right answer, they receive a green pen and go help others. 

5.  The teacher only looks for those students who have done the problems correctly. 

6.  It is up to the students to help each other until everyone has it done.

7.  Assign a few more problems and repeat.

This is cool in that the students who finish first are given something to do rather than just giving them more problems to do and they get so far ahead that those who struggle never catch up.  I really like this idea.

As far a doing it on digital devices,  You can pick up stylos for cheap on Amazon.  Get a bunch of those and hand them out to the students instead of green highlighters so they can write on tablets.

This can be used for any topic at any time, easy to implement and its not that expensive to pick up several boxes of green highlighters.  This keeps students occupied who finish first and gives the chance for others to get caught up.  It also implements peer tutoring effectively and shifts learning from teacher driven to student driven.

This is cool.  I am off to order multiple boxes of green highlighters so I can start doing it in March. I also have several stylos around for when we used digital devices. 

More On Teaching Radicals

   I am always on the look out for ideas when teaching material.  I ended up at the Math = Love site.  Its actually a unit for radicals and I like the way she reviews primes and composite numbers first before anything else. 

I admit, I've never thought to review this topic because I keep assuming that students will remember this from the last time they had it.  I should know better but it all boils down to "What do I have time to teach?"  I think it would help the unit run smoother if I did this.

She also has a lovely exercise to help students learn more about the parts of a radical. In addition, I like the way she has students prime factor everything on the side and look for groupings that match the index.  Its the same way that PUMAS at NASA recommends teaching it this way so people learn in 5 minutes.  She has all the templates needed that can be downloaded.

Another site I found has a lovely card game for simplifying radicals.  Its modified from another game found on the internet.  The site includes a video showing how the game is played and the author talks about how she would modify it for the next time.

Learn NC has a nice little activity that uses real life examples whose formulas use radicals.  It shows the formula and defines the variables.  In addition there is a real life problem that uses the formula and there is an answer sheet.

I even found a mad minute activity for helping students learn to simplify radicals more easily.  It comes with everything you need.

While looking for ideas, I found a really awesome activity that is easy to implement without tons of preparation or money.  It can be used for a variety of mathematical topics.  I'll be talking about it tomorrow.

Cool Activity for Solving Radicals

  I am teaching solving radicals in my Algebra II classroom.  Due to admin work, I have a substitute in my classroom so I went looking for activities to assign tomorrow.

I came across this cool idea to help students learn to solve equations with radicals.  Miss Calculate's blog has an activity where students use strips to solve an equation.

She wrote the steps for solving a specific problem on strips.  The first step of the problem was marked with a star to show students where to start.  Then they arranged the remaining strips in order till the last strip which is the x = answer.  

Now there is a digital way to do this same activity.  Intel Education has a visual ranking tool which can easily be used to create digital strips.  You simply put in the steps, one step per slip, make sure the steps are not in order and save it.  When the students do this the ranking is not based on importance but on the order of the steps.

This visual ranking tool works on iPads, android devices, iPhones, and Windows computers.  It is nice knowing that it will work on the iPads because they developed a free app you can find in the itunes store.

Think about how this same process would work for solving equations with variables on both sides, solving systems of equations, solving multistep equations with the distributive property, geometry proofs, ranking the most important properties for 3D and 2D figures such as the most important for a square, rectangle, kite, trapezoid, etc.  This offers so many possibilities for use in the classroom.

Math Bits

  I found a nice little site today.  Its called Math Bits notebook (online study notebook) and it is set up as a wonderful digital notebook. Please be aware that all materials are copyrighted and may not be reposted to the internet and is not considered "Fair Use" for educators.

In addition, the material contained in this site go with common core standards.   The site contains material for Algebra, Geometry (90% complete) and some Algebra II. Although the material is set to go with New York State requirements, it is usable anywhere that uses common core. 

When you click on the topic, you go to a clickable table of contents which is referred to as the outline with topics and subtopics.  When you click on the topic, you are taken to another clickable list of lessons, practice, and refreshers.  The practice page has multiple choice questions.  If a student chooses the wrong answer, there is a popup box stating it is incorrect but it does not state why.  They get a popup box if they are correct too.

The lesson are short  at one page but there are lots of examples to check out.  The refresher is actually a reteach with examples or a short quiz that gives immediate feedback.  It is a way to review previous skills.

In addition, there are sister sites for all three topics.  The sister sites provide teacher resources to accompany the notebook but does require a subscription to access all the materials.  There are a few that are free so the instructor gets a taste of the activities and materials available but the majority require the subscription.  The subscription also allows you to access all answer keys, worksheets, activities, puzzles, etc and any new materials.

Both Algebra I  and Geometry have over 600 resources and Algebra II has over 500 resources available to accompany each digital notebook.  The cost is about $40.00 per year for a single subscription and I don't know if you can get a discount if you want all three subscriptions.  You'd have to contact them.

I can honestly say, I like this website as the notebooks are already created and ready to go.  I am thinking about using this to help students learn because I am heading into the testing time of the year and it might make things a bit easier so students can catch up if they are out of the room due to testing or sports.  They can access this if they are out as long as they have internet access.

Is This Wrong?

I've been working on radicals with my Algebra I class.  They've been having a very difficult time with the idea that something squared is a number times itself.  So if I ask them what the square root of 25 is, they give me a totally blank look.

Out of desperation, I drew a square on the board, labeled the area inside 16 square units and labeled each side as 4.  I told them the number under the square root is the area found inside a square.  We know the area is length times width or side times side.  The square root sign is asking for the length of any side.  Because its a square, the sides are all the same length and you only have to write down one side.

This is the first time I've taught it this way but it made it easier for students to visualize and find the square root of a number.  For cubed roots, I drew a 3 dimensional cube with a volume of 8 and showed how the height, width, and length were each 2 inches.  I only needed the 2 written once because each length was the same.

It actually worked quite well.  My students often drew a small square on the side of the page, filled in the area, and found the side length much faster than teaching it the traditional way.  So when I moved to simplifying I talked about perfect squares (relating them to area again) and a square that is not perfect.

I have a story I use to help students remember which value is taken out.  There are two sisters who share a house.  One sister is perfect.  Her hair is always done perfectly, her make up is perfect, even her clothing is just perfect.  The other sister is comfortable, doesn't worry about looking perfect all the time.  The perfect sister goes out to the front porch to flirt with the boys while the not so perfect sister stays inside to read a book or play a game.

If a student asks me if they got the problem right, I simply ask "Did the perfect sister leave the house?".  They can easily figure out if they did it right.

Now the question I have for everyone.  "Do you think its fine to teach square roots this way?"  Thanks in advance for your input.