What's My Rule? Technology Mode
Objective
Big Idea
Warm Up
As is typical each Wednesday, Warm Up problems today are replaced with another Continuous Improvement Quiz, #8, that focuses on number sense topics with which 8th graders often struggle. Fractions, decimals, percents, and exponents all appear on this week's quiz. Students have 15 minutes to complete the quiz and then I take up the answer sheets and go over the answers with the class. I check the answer sheets and return them to the students without putting them in the grade book. They keep track of their weekly progress in the data folders. I also maintain a class run chart, where we celebrate when our class earns an "All Time Best" score.
This ungraded assessment provides me excellent data, especially when students miss problems based on topics we have already learned. This is an indication that I need to revisit these troublesome topics in subsequent Warm Ups.
See my Strategies Folder for a full explanation of the CI Process and all the related tools needed to effectively implement this system!
What's My Rule? Technology Mode
As I pass out graphing calculators (Ti83's), I explain that today we are going to learn how to play "What's My Rule" technology style. None of my students has experience with graphing calculators, but previous experience tells me that they will pick up the workings very quickly, with little or no intervention or teaching from me.
I distribute typed directions on how to program the calculator for the game we learned the previous day. I also return their Tickets Out the Door from the previous day which will serve as a starting point for programming.
As soon as they receive the instructions, they begin programming the calculators. It takes less than five minutes for most students to finish, so I encourage them to type in their rule they wrote for the TOTD into the y= page and then challenge a table mate to guess the rule.
Once partners begin guessing, I encourage the students to modify their rule or delete and start with a new rule. As the students continue to play, I tell students that I am searching for a difficult rule that will stump the class for today's closure.
Closure: Stump the Class
When the timer sounds after 15 minutes, I call the class's attention to the smartboard where I have created the data table for a difficult rule I borrowed from a student (y= -3x + 2 ). I instructed the students to work at their tables to determine the rule. The student who contributed the rule graciously agreed to pick up the graphing calculators while the others worked.
Class time ended with no group finding the rule so I explained that the following day, we would work to develop some strategies for finding the rule when given a table of values.
