Order of Operations Fun

A few days ago, I was looking across the courtyard into the upper school classrooms, and all I saw were students sitting in their seats and teachers standing delivering content.  This prompted me to take a quick stroll around our campus to see whether this was the norm.  I wandered the halls of our upper school, middle school and lower school.  Do you know what I found?  In only ONE classroom were students actually standing and working in groups.  In every other classroom, the teacher was talking and the students were seated at their desk.  I'm sure this isn't always the case, but it prompted me to rethink my next lesson.

I was designing my lesson(s) for teaching the order of operations with the objective of getting students to interact with the skill in multiple ways (mainly out of their seats).  So, with the help of a colleague, I created some stations to teach the concept.  

First, I had students work in small groups to simplify a challenging expression.  This led to a variety of simplifications, and we discussed the reasons for the varience, and

My notes for the interactive notebook

the importance of having a set of rules to follow when simplifying expressions.  Next, I used an interactive notebook entry to provide some background knowledge for those that haven't been exposed to the order of operations. 

After I felt like students had a basic understanding of the orders of operation, I split them up into 3 groups of 5.  I know, I only have 15 students in this class...so lucky.  These were the groups:

Pemdonkey

1)  Pin the tail on the PEMDONKEY:  I traced a large donkey on the white board and divided it into PEMDAS sections.  I asked one student in the group to put on a blindfold.  I gave the rest of the group and expression to simplify.  The group had to direct the "blind" member to the correct operation using verbal instructions.  Then they would complete that step of the simplification and continue doing this until they had simplified the expression completely.

2.  Simplifying Expression worksheet - Nothing exciting here, but it gave the student a chance to start the homework.  This also gave me a chance to formatively assess their progress and do any necessary scaffolding.  Notice the small white board in the background.  

Worksheet practice

Hop Scotch PEMDAS style

 3.  PEMDAS Scotch - In this station, students were asked to play a variation of hopscotch.  First, the just completed 5 rounds of hopping through the game board while shouting out the order of operations.  Next, I gave each student a separate expression to simplify.  They had to throw a paper clip marker to the correct operation, then hop to pick it up.  They continued this process until they had simplified their expression.  They repeated this process with a new expression once they had finished.

Each station lasted 12 minutes, but it wasn't nearly long enough.  I should have allotted 18-20 minutes, because each group needed vebal instructions and demonstrations in order to get started.  Also, I did not leave enough time for an adequate wrap-up.  All I was able to do was a quick 1-5 scale of how well they felt they could apply the order of operations.

I know there will need to be some follow up, but, at least for today, my classroom was filled with students out of their seats and engaged in their learning.  Let's hope it lasts!

Week of iMath Day 1 - Thank you!

Thank you Jo Boaler and the Stanford University team for breathing some math life into my first day of school this year. Typically, my first day of school is filled with community building activities, helping me to get to know my students, and creating an active learning community. However, these activities have rarely been associated with math content. This year, thanks to the youcubed website, I was able to get the students thinking about math while building community and creating an atmospher of learning.

I started the class by reviewing some procedures, i.e. how to enter the class, materials needed, warm-up routine, etc.  Then, I had the students get started on the first warm up activity, "What's Missing" from AIMS educational resources. I really wanted to set a tone of "hard work" this year, so I decided to do some math right away. I'm trying a new warm-up routine this year, so I wanted to get going on it right away. This also provided a quick formative assessment of where students were at in regards to their math thinking and perserverance in math.

After we finished the warm-up, we did a quick name game to get acquainted, and then I went into Day 1 of  the Week of iMath.  We began by creating some group work agreements.  All I asked the students to do was think of 2 things they like and dislike others to do/say when working in groups.  We shared out, and I compiled a list of agreements.  Following the group agreements, we watched the short 4 minute clip on brain development and a growth mindset form the iMath website.  This, although not exciting, set a good tone for the notion that everyone can be successful in math.

The real beauty of the day came during the activity "Four Fours".  Students were asked to work indpendently, or in groups, to find the numbers 1-20 by using four fours and various operations.  Before they began, we brainstormed the different operations they could use.  I was thoroughly impressed when one of my seventh grade students offered factorial and square root.  I then made note of some sentence starter posters that I had created to promote productive conversation, and asked students to use these sentence starters when speaking in their groups.  Then, they were off.  The students worked for a solid 20 minutes on math...the first day.  After we had created our lists, I had the students critique other's thinking and work.

This activity was a wonderful way to introduce group agreements, math dialogue,and creativity in math, while creating the precedent that we're going to be doing math this year, and it can be fun!  I even overheard a student leave the class say, "That was fun!"  I think that's a first!