Editable Area and Perimeter Foldable

Wednesday, March 29, 2017
This is an Area and Perimeter book that I created last semester to review with my level classes. I decided to use this foldable instead of my Area and Perimeter Flip-book (click here for previous post) because I wanted to give my students time to complete their Dream House Project in class. I used the flip-book as an extra study guide to help out struggling students.






If you would like to use, I included an editable template in PPT for this foldable. All you have to do is type in the boxes the questions that works best for your grade level.  


Here is a glance at some of the assignments that students did as extra practice/stations review. 



This was by FAR my favorite unit this year so far because students were able to create their own "Dream House" using real world materials. They even had their own budget! Students were extremely engaged and looked forward to coming to class to finish their "house" every day. :)

I also decided to create different shapes around my classroom and they had to use rulers and protractors (trig) to figure out missing lengths in order to find the area and perimeter.

If you would like another post in more detail about the Dream House project and other activity, I'll be happy to post this week!


Here are the files for the Area and Perimeter Book: 







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Quadrilateral Properties w/ Card Sort

Monday, March 27, 2017
I changed it up this year and introduced these pages before my quadrilaterals flip-book (you can find in previous post ). I had students tape down properties of parallelograms, rectangles, rhombi, and squares on the left side of their notebook and had them tape down properties of trapezoids on the right side.

I told students, every day that we go through the different types of quadrilaterals, I want you to reference this page and write down key information that will help you remember. This will be your own personal "quadrilaterals cheat sheet" and its sole purpose is to help you come up with your own way to remember the properties.

After the unit was done, I glanced through students notebook and wrote down the most common notes. The pictures below are what most of my students ended up writing down in their INB. I did not provide students with any information to write down. 









After students taped down the blank properties in their INB, I had students complete a quadrilateral card sort. I told students to sort the cards and write down a short paragraph on why they chose to sort their cards that way. 




The following are the 3 most popular categories that students chose to sort their cards.

Popular Category #1: 5 different groups

Group 1: Angles on cards J, F, P, G, H, and C are all congruent.





Group 2: Angles on cards N and L are supplementary.



Group 3: On card A, only half of the diagonals marked.


Group 4: On cards I, D, O, and M, the angles marked are supposed to represent ninety degrees.


Group 5: On cards E, K, and B, the diagonals are congruent.



Popular Category #2: 2 different groups based on angles and diagonals

Group 1: On cards C, D, F, G, H, I, J, L, M, N, O, and P, angles are marked in the picture.



Group 2: On cards A, B, K, and E, diagonals are marked or given in the picture. 



Popular Category #3: 2 different groups

Group 1: 
Students placed these cards in the same group because they are all part of the parallelogram "family."




Group 2: 
Students placed these cards in the same group because they have their own family since they do not have two pairs of parallel sides. 



This was my first card sort activity where I allowed students to choose how they wanted to sort the cards. Definitely going to be making more card sorts like these in the future!

Here are the files that I used if you would like to use!





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Anchor Chart for Surface Area and Volume of Prisms

Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Today, I decided to create the following anchor charts for my geometry resource classes. The purpose of creating these charts was to give students an additional tool to support instruction and to move the students towards achieving success with finding the surface area and volume of prisms. I'm going to ask the librarians at my school to print these out as half size posters and laminate them for me to hang them up around my classroom for students to reference. It's faster for me to create this anchor chart digitally than to handwrite it.

This is my first year teaching a geometry resource class and I did not realize how much assistance and supplemental aids some of these students need. My resource classes are very small and one class has 8 students and the other class has 5 students. Last month, I learned that my school district is getting rid of these geometry resource classes so this has me scrambling to come up with ways for these students to be successful in my on-level classes for next year. I think I am going to create these charts for every topic in geometry and have them spiral bound for students to reference.







Any feedback or suggestions are welcome since this is my very first "digital" anchor chart. 

Here is the file if you would like to use:


2

Pi Day Card

Monday, March 13, 2017
I absolutely LOVE receiving any sort of notes from students so I decided to make a "Happy Pi Day" card for students to write to their favorite teachers. Best part of this was that students asked if they could write to multiple teachers!


Note: I added "FROM" to this since I had a lot of students not sign their name.

Feel free to use: Happy Pi Day Cards




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Quick Error Analysis Practice

Monday, March 6, 2017
I am always in the process of changing up my lesson plans last minute. If my principal were to walk in my classroom on Wednesday, my agenda and activities would not match up with my lesson plans for the week. For example, I did not like the way my lesson was going with some of my classes during my quadrilaterals unit. I decided to rig something up last minute during my conference period and try it out with my remaining classes.

This activity was easy to make since all I had to do was solve the problems either correctly (truth) or incorrect (lie). Students had to separate the cards and justify their reasoning on the card stock. I thought that students would easily catch my errors but, students took their time and slowly examined each card.

I had a total of 7 "truths" and 5 "lies" and this threw some students for a loop because students automatically assumed that there would be an even amount of "truths" and "lies."






If you haven't already tried some error analysis practice, I highly recommend it! It is easy to create since you could use an anonymous student's work or you can write it out yourself.

Here are the blank cards that I used for this activity:


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