the mathsmith collage

the mathsmith collage

Monday, September 3, 2012

#made4math Monday Week 10 - My First Attempts at Foldables


So this past Friday, I did my first foldable with students.

In my Algebra 1 B class, which is basically the first "semester" of Algebra 1 that covers writing and solving equations, slope and graphing linear equations, etc., we had a lesson on writing equations from words.  Before we got into the examples, we did the foldable reviewing the key words that indicate addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  So, I decided Thursday after school to do a foldable on it based on Sarah's blog post (see the portion about translating algebraic expressions).

To fill in the outside with words that describe the math operations, I asked students to call out words that they remember.  They came up with some that we didn't!  Some examples:

Half (times 1/2 or divided by 2)
Greater than (adding)
Take away (subtracting)
Of (mulitply...full disclosure, I added that one)




Tomorrow, I plan on doing 'to the square inch's system of equations foldable with my Algebra 1 C class (2nd "semester" that covers systems of equations, exponent rules, etc.).  I bought colored printer paper for the occasion because the colored paper selection in the office is somewhat limited and I liked the bright colors shown on the blog post.  I will update with the results from tomorrow.




Update: The students really seemed to enjoy this activity.  They even referred to the foldable when we did example problems.  I even talked with some of the students about color with a purpose.  One student said, "I should start color coding from now on instead of randomly using highlighters!"


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Also, in an attempt at procrastinating from grading review work for tomorrow, I decided to make a few posters based on word press' mathsmith's post.



And, finally, this past weekend, I did a screenshot from homestarrunner.com's teen girl squad when I noticed this:

This is now my twitter profile picture.



2 comments:

  1. I have decided to create more foldables in class but am worried about the amount of time needed to create them. Any thoughts?

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    Replies
    1. I'm spoiled this year with trimesters and 72 minute blocks, so this isn't as much of a concern for me. However, I noticed yesterday that I ran out of time for all the things I wanted to do and needed to tweak plans for today.

      Maybe do as much as you can ahead of time for them? For example, I cut the long strip off the 1st one for the students so they aren't waiting for each other to share the scissors.

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