Start / Stop / Continue in 2023 - Yule Blog Challenge

 

Start / Stop / Continue in 2023 

As a math support teacher, I do less of the initial instruction but work with students more individually or in small groups when they have questions.  I'm happy to report that they have lots of questions, and I love helping them.  

One thing, though, that I want to stop is telling them information that they have in their notes. Instead I need to start prompting them to reference those notes.  

It's so much easier and faster just to answer their question, but it benefits them more in the long run if I help them become more independent in their learning.  Particularly middle schoolers don't automatically think to look back at the notes they took in class if they get stuck while doing their homework.  It seems obvious to us as teachers, but it isn't a habit they've developed yet.  If I can make sure my students learn to do this in middle school, I've planted a seed for their success in high school.

My Favorite Lesson of 2022 - Yule Blog Challenge

 

My Favorite Lesson of 2022 - Slope Dude

One of the joys of returning to math teaching in 2022 after 8 years of teaching German is that I got to teach about slope, which means I got to introduce my students to Slope Dude.

I first learned about Slope Dude from Sarah Carter at Math=Love, and I've wanted to teach a lesson using him ever since.  This fall, I got my chance!

I was working with a small group of seven pre-algebra students who were being exposed to the concept of slope for the first time.  We started with the video

and played Slope Dude Says.  It did not disappoint!  My students got very into it, and the competition between the final two was intense.  

Then, we drew pictures of the four types of slope in our notes

and color coded our names based on the type of slope in each line segment. (I missed a few here!)

Finally, we progressed to finding the numerical slope of a line from a graph.  

It was a lot of fun, and my students definitely finished the day with a good conceptual understanding of slope.  I could hear them saying "puff, puff positive" and "nice negative" - music to my ears!