I've taught the first lesson of Algebra 2, and it went well. I love the energy that 9th graders have, but I do have to admit that it is pleasant not to have to spend the first few weeks breaking the kids in from scratch. My first unit is on the real number system. The skills that I plan on covering are here.
In the past, students have had great difficulty dealing with the Venn Diagram of the number system. They always got tripped up with the fact that all whole numbers are integers, but not all integers are whole numbers (for example). So I decided to make my first lesson of the year about classification with Venn Diagrams. The second lesson extends that understanding to the number system. I'm hoping that this scaffolding will make the number system much easier to understand and remember.
Here are the lessons if you want to see what I am doing. (I plan to post all of my lessons as they go, so stay tuned if you are interested. And, any and all feedback on lessons would be greatly appreciated, especially if you try out something of mine in your class).
Lesson 1 (classification)
Lesson 2 (real number system)
Island Maps complex instruction skillbuilder I used in lesson 1
Thinking Thursday: Explain a Math Trick
2 days ago
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3 comments:
Hi Dan,
Thanks for your continued efforts at sharing! I'm downloading files as you go, though not necessarily looking at all of them yet. (Figure I'll use the finder function on the Mac to help me find skills when I need them.) I'll try to be better about coming back with feedback throughout the year.
Relatedly, I've been coming back to your posts on math autobiographies for our first week. Ended up not using quite that assignment this year, opting for 9 questions instead. But it's been amazing both to pull from and to re-read the stories you posted.
G'day Dan,
Your comprehensive lesson plans are a great resource. Unlike Sarah, I'm not downloading them... I'm hoping your links will still be live next time I teach these classes. Box.net seems easy to use and auto-magically converts your docs to iPaper(?) when I preview them online - nice.
Hi Dan,
I only just stumbled upon your blog. It is excellent.
Your second lesson plan on classifying the real number system is very good.
I used many of your ideas from it when I taught my year 9 students last week. I especially liked the idea of showing an overhead of a definition and then getting the students to identify which numbers (on the cards) matched it.
I removed the definition of whole number and instead replaced it with classifying the integers futher into positive integers and negative integers.
Thanks once again.
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