Wrapping Up Our First Six Weeks of Learning

To say our first six week's grading period flew by, is an understatement!  September has been filled with the many firsts:  first day of school, major projects and assessments, school dance, Homecoming spirit week and our first football game.  Needless to say, everyone has been full of enthusiasm and lots of smiles!

In 7th grade math, we've wrapped up our first unit, which covered similar figures.  We have spent the past week working with the WON method.  The "WON" method provides some much needed structure for our learners as we deepen our knowledge of proportionality!  Because of their prior experiences with ratio tables, we introduced similar drawings with ratio tables.  Quickly, learners were challenged with how to find the solution to a not so "obvious" answer using a ratio table and that's when the WON method was introduced!

Of course, with the addition of WON, there was some hesitation and confusion, but we persevered and now it's become a go to method for many!  In fact, one girl asked, "Do we have to use ratio tables?  I love using the WON method!"  Music to my ears as she feels confident in using a new method and loves justifying her solutions with WON.

In 6th PAP math, we've just finished learning about area!  I loved hearing how proud the learners of Room 103 were of themselves, as they worked on both their Google Slides area review and their Flipgrid assignment.

                                            

A few days before our assessment, students were given the task of using Flipgrid to justify their solution to a problem that involved working backwards to find a missing dimension.  The rubric was given, which sparked amazing thinking as my inbox began to fill up with notifications of students' video submissions.

Responding back to my learners' videos

One of the most amazing parts of Flipgrid, is the immediate feedback that I received!  It was 9:00 PM, as I was watching and responding to our classmates, when I quickly realized majority of my learners were missing a part of the area formula for a triangle.  Forgetting to divide by two is what sets the formula of a triangle apart from the area of a quadrilateral, which our learners could explain in class.  However, after some time had passed between our classroom experience and their recording, we forgot.  After a few videos, I immediately created a warmup that allowed for more practice and discussion over the area of triangles!  I also added this into our Google Slides review which we began the following day in class.

At the end of every unit, I ask for feedback from my learners to gauge how they feel as a learner in our classroom, the different strategies we implemented during instruction, as well as reflecting on each other's behavior.  Sure some of the data is hard to swallow, but it's also very eye opening and reminds me why I am a teacher.

Activating Our Prior Knowledge with AngleLegs

My first exposure to learning with AngleLegs was during professional learning in June 2016!  I had never used these "toys" and was beyond excited after my first encounter.  During our professional learning, we were each given a set and asked to build various polygons.  Using academic vocabulary, we described our figures to our partners.  Because of the colors of each AngleLeg, we were able to visually see the congruent sides.  I couldn't wait to try this investigation with my kids this year!  

Because of how our schedule is set up, we pre-teach/reteach foundational TEKS for our upcoming units, during our intervention time.  During February, we spent two weeks revisiting similar figures, which was taught in 7th grade, as well as learning how to use a protractor to measure angles.  

 

Students were each handed set of AngleLegs and allowed to play for a few minutes.  It was interesting to watch how they sorted the figures, some in neat stacks, while others, immediately went to building and constructing.  To start our investigation of similar figures, we constructed various triangles:  equilateral, isosceles, scalene, right, acute, and obtuse.  This provided insight to our upcoming lessons, as to what learners already understood!  

After constructing our triangles, it was time to use the protractor and measure the angles inside each triangle.  One of the best parts of using AngleLegs to learn how to use a protractor is that there is a place to "snap" the protractor on and lines to help where to place the protractor.  

As we measured the various angles of our triangles, learners were given the opportunity to share their learning, by walking a new partner through the activity.