Lesson Plan Ideas Archives - Page 3 of 3

April 17, 2018

Go To: Concentration Cards

Go-to’s: My go to activities: flexible, easy to prep and explain, engaging for students and their brains. (Inspired by one of those ‘so what do you do …’ conversations with another teacher)

Activity: Card game, matching pairs based on “Concentration” (aka Memory)

Theory: We need a break from worksheets. Mostly: I find my students struggle with equivalence and recognizing two items in different formats as the same value, concentration focuses them on these relationships.

Example: We’re easing in to a new term with a word problem review, so I made Concentration cards. Once half of each pair was an expression in English (5 less than 16, the sum of 2 and 7…), its pair was either a mathematical expression (16-5) or a final value (9).

Prep:

Fold a piece of paper into small squares (8ths or 12ths work for me) to hand write or use a template to type (Next time I’m using a blank business card template – they’re a nice size and should print just fine without the fancy paper)

You want pairs of cards, blank on the back. I like values that are equivalent but not equal, so an expression and an answer, a definition and vocab word etc. I find 10 – 15 pairs (20 to 30 cards) is a nice level of challenge.

Print and cut out a deck per student-group.

Pro tips/Learned it the hard way

Use card stock or dark-colored paper – I’ve had crafty students figure out how to read through my lighter paper versions.

Use a different color for each deck of cards so you don’t spend forever reuniting lost/scrambled/mis-placed cards.

In class:

Remind students how to play. (I’m always surprised that people don’t know or have forgotten this game)

In short: The cards go face down on the table. Each student takes a turn trying to make a pair by turning over two cards and looking for a match. Winner is the player with the most pairs at the end.

Here are full instructions

I like groups of 2 or 3. Any larger and there’s too much downtime. Groups play until all of the cards have been paired or until a set time has elapsed.

Pro tips/Learned it the hard way

A reminder to return cards to their original places is valuable. There’s always one group that inadvertently ups the difficulty level by rearranging the cards.

Extension Possibilities

Students create a new pair or pairs of cards with their own examples.

Works for:

Vocab (word on one card, definition on the other)
Conversions (e.g. 1 foot = 12 inches)
Equivalent values (e.g. equivalent fractions, simplified and expanded expressions)
The math equivalent of sight words, those things you want them to recognize quickly (e.g. perfect squares)
Really, pretty much anything….

April 14, 2018

Lesson Sketch: Collective Notes

Problem: Students passively copy down whatever I write on the board as notes, and/or flail about and miss (or mis-organize) key information.

Topic: Any.

But, use judiciously. I save it for days when I need to deliver some specific, important content (For my class, for example, the steps to solve 2-step equations)

I usually try to keep lecture-y time to a minimum, and this makes the lecture more active, but also really sage-on-the-stage central and takes a bigger chunk of classtime. In general, I like it best as a second class, after some more exploratory activity to introduce the concept.

Process:

If your students struggle as much as mine, you might give them a lightly structured guide for their note taking. And/or talk about good note taking: types of information, purposes, ways of organizing etc.

Here is a generic note-taking organizer (as google doc or PDF)

Teacher presentation (model solving some type of problem, explain some piece of content etc.) Be extra clear/slow/thorough – but resist the urge to write note-like things on the board.
Stop periodically, ask students to look at their notes and share one ‘note’ with a neighbor (think/pair/share)
Repeat until content is covered.

Then, in groups, students review their notes and choose a few points they want to contribute to the collective.
Groups share their selected points while teacher records, probing for information to fill in gaps or misunderstandings, until the class has a complete set of notes on the topic (I’m grateful for a computer/projector set up, but I’m confident you could make this work with whatever tech you have)
Make a copy of the notes for each student and distribute.

Why:

– By my count, students will have run each piece of content through their brains approximately 11 times using five different modes (no really, I counted, I think it’s 11 if they’re actively participating: listen and write; then read, choose, speak, listen during the pair share; then read, choose, speak, listen and read again making the collective) That’s a lot of processing for an activity that looks a lot like a lecture.

– Note taking is a skill. It’s one my students need, but we don’t have a lot of time to teach. This way, they get some support from the organizer, they get to see the best ideas of their peers, and watch the organization of the teacher transcribing it. They’ve also had a couple rounds of reviewing their work and identifying the best items – I hope this helps them produce more of these kind of items when they’re on their own for note taking.

– Also, note taking, they’re not good at it on their own (yet!). This way I knew everyone got a solid set of notes to use as a reference.

– The group dynamics. The least visible, maybe the most important. They’re collaborating to create the thing together, as a group, where everyone contributes. And, when they tell me what to write, they own it. That final, printed official looking reference on two step equations, they made that that, not me. It’s a nice reminder of their knowledge and capacity.

March 29, 2018February 8, 2020

Leveling Up Homework

My homework system challenges students to be independent learners

I like this. But many of my students don’t know how to study particularly effectively. Most students, period, don’t know how to study particularly effectively, but it’s particularly challenging to do it as an adult with competing responsibilities.

This year, I challenged them to try some different study goals and formats. I gave out a list, added it to their homework folder, and asked them to initial/date when they achieved each.

(In the future, I might find a way to integrate my homework log and this list, but I’m not there yet)

Here’s the current version of our ‘Level Up’ Homework Challenge

(The title was inspired by the power of ‘leveling up’ in Chip and Dan Heath’s The Power of Moments)

The goal was to encourage them to work more at home, in general. But in particular, to help them become better independent learners by experimenting with different formats (to see which worked for them and/or do something new)

My impression as we went along was that students’ mostly forgot about the list, and certainly weren’t challenged or inspired by it.

Yet.

(that powerful word)

There are some advantages to our frequent first days. Lots of fresh starts and chances to improve.

As we change terms, I’m asking students to review their progress and set some goals for the next trimester.

And I’ve already made a note on my term plan: in a few weeks, we’ll be checking in on our progress, and I’ll be returning a copy of their goals to them as a reminder.

Here’s the check in we used (PDF)

February 15, 2018

Turning the Tables – Error Correction (Lesson Sketch)

Theory:

Catching your own errors is hard. It’s helpful (and more fun) to practice catching someone else’s errors. (Especially the teacher’s) (Also, to do it, you have to pay close attention to the correct method)

In practice:

Do the worksheet you would have given your students… badly. (I usually aim for about a 50/50 error rate.) Plan your errors for the kind your students are mostly likely to make. (I’ll be forgetting to treat both sides of an equation equally, and reversing operations this week)

Give students the error-filled page(s) and a red pen. Their assignment: correct your work.

But not just correct it, give the kind of detailed feedback that would help this poor struggling teacher student learn. I ask my students to:

-Mark each question right/wrong

-Circle the specific error

-Write the correct method

-At the end of the worksheet, write a note with the reminders this student might need. (The notes are really sweet, I hope they talk to themselves as encouragingly as they write)

((Bonus, they will now appreciate how much work grading/your job is))

Easily adapted to: Just about any topic. In my experience, it works best with multistep calculation tasks where procedure/precision matter.

Resource: Algebra by Example (Example-based problem sets, many of them correcting an error)

February 12, 2018

Lesson Sketch: Proportions Project

Lesson Sketch: Not a lesson plan, but a sketch, an idea, adaptable to your context and content

Theory: If you’re going to do math you need numbers. And they might as well be about something. And that something might as well be how learning happens.

Practice: Tonight’s lesson on ratios and proportions.

Conduct teeny (anonymous, paper) survey about big learning topics.

For my class, three yes/no/maybe questions: learning preferences (aka, learning style*), do you know yours?; math anxiety, do you have it?; studying independently, do you do it?

(Here’s a version, if you’d like to borrow it)

2. Three questions, become 3 student groups. Groups convert data to ratios, then ratios to proportions as they estimate the number of students in the school who do or don’t have math anxiety, study independently etc. Statistics become posters as they present their findings. (Or not, if like me, you run out of time for posters)

Expansion possibilities:

-Offer resources on learning preferences/styles, anxiety etc. when students complete math project.

-More statistics! Sample vs. population, survey methods etc.

Easily adapted to: Making bar/pie graphs, percents, simple statistics.

*Yes, I know the research that learning styles aren’t a thing. But for students who’ve always experienced school as a disempowering struggle, thinking about their preferences and the different ways one might learn is still a useful conversation.