Area Model Puzzles

I'm so excited to share this activity with you!! I've been working on it with the answer key for several hours now and I think I'm starting to go cross eyed LOL. So please check and re-check the answer key before you use just to be safe. If you do find a typo please let me know so I can fix my copy and repost new worksheet.

This resource came from an idea that Anna over at TypeAMathLand gave me on twitter after I posted my blog on how I use the box method for multiplying & factoring polynomials.

So after reading her tweet I pulled up my notes and started thinking about what she said and it made so much sense. I esspecially like how it made the connection of "area model" way more concrete for me. I had heard other teachers around the MTBOS use that terminology before but didn't quite make that connection until after Anna mentioned only finding the gcf of the first row in my box method while factoring trinomials. I was always telling them to take the gcf in both rows which would have been fine but they also had to remember to take out the same sign of the term in the bottom left row as in the gcf of the bottom row but I didn't really know why we did that. So now when we do it her way it won't be a trick to remember anymore it will just be what multiples to equal the inside. 

As I kept thinking about our conversation I remembered Sarah sharing a photo of the trinomial x puzzles she uses which help prepare students for factoring trinomials. So I used that idea and created a puzzle that will help students understand the box method "area model" for multiplying polynomials. 

If you are interested in the trinomial x puzzles I tracked down the original blog post I think by Mr. K here. The link to the worksheet is at the bottom. I'll definitely be using that worksheet to prepare for factoring trinomials. 

I also found an electronic version which I love more!! You should check out DeltaMath and search for the X game. There are 3 different levels which is awesome. You will need to create an account but I promise it is totally worth it!! Blog coming soon about this website as it is a go too practice place for my students and I love that they can even do most of the topics from their phone. 

The best part about this website is there are explainations for every problem. One of the hardest parts of my job is having enough time in a period to help every single student. I really appreciate this website because the explainations show students where they messed up and that helps avoid tons of questions that I would be asked. Now I'm able to focus on the students who really struggle or the more complex mistakes in problems. 

So if your looking for a new addition to these types of puzzles for your students here is my area model puzzle worksheets that I will be using before I teach multiplying polynomials. I can't wait to update this blog with actual photos of student work. 

If you would like to download the files you can click below:

Area Model Puzzle

Area Model Puzzle Answer Key

Blank Area Model Puzzle

Explain Everything & 3 Act Math Lessons

For many of us we get lost on technology and how to use it in our classrooms daily. Here is one way that I use mine so that maybe you can be inspired to research ways that you would like to use your resources.

The technology that I currently have in my classroom consist of:

1 Brightlink Board

1 iPad

1 Apple TV

1 Dell Laptop

This past year we were lucky to receive title 1 funding and this coming year as well so I may be blessed with more technology in the future. Here is a breakdown of how I use my technology currently. But I'm always looking for new ideas so if you have any please comment below!!

On a basic day I use it as my whiteboard from my iPad since we have AppleTVs to send the information wireless to the projector. I like having the option to record anything that I discuss up on the board. My plan this past year was to record multiple problems but I got busy and forgot most times. I'm hoping to record more often this coming year so that students can watch our lesson multiple times if they need extra time or practice. 

I hate textbooks (I always have -- too wordy & too much information for someone that wants to go straight to the point like me). So, I make my own student guided notes and I use explain everything to upload the pdf files into the program and annotate on top of them. I save these files and put them on the internet on my topic list page that students that review or copy if they were absent for the lesson. 

My newest venture with Explain Everything is incorporating the 3 Act Math Lessons that were created by Dan Meyer and others. I created multiple slides that I can scroll through when I'm ready to jump over to the next act. I also created slides (Notice & Wonder) that goes right after the video or picture in act 1 so we can communicate and document what we see and are curious about. Depending on the math that we will use I might have a slide that uses the internet to pull in desmos to calculate our mathematics then screen shot the final image into the video to save. After we have determine our solutions we will jump to the next slide which has act3 the answer. I found that in solving many of these 3 act problems my calculations were not exactly the same as the answer and so I put in a final slide (Actual & Calculated) to discuss if our answers are different why might they be different. I'm happy with the product because it seems to give a smooth transition between acts and the discussion in class. I'm always looking for ways to implement my teaching and resources so that students do not get distracted or get off task as quickly. I hope this set up will avoid some of those issues. 

Here is a video I created with a 3 Act Math Lesson created by Nora Oswald on Super Mario Bros.

Another idea I started while teaching summer school was to use the iPad to take pictures of student work and upload them into Explain Everything so we could annotate over them. I really like this because I focused on student mistakes and trying to teach them it was a process not a bad thing. I want to stress this so much next year because so often students are afraid to mess up. I want them to realize it's the analyzing their mistakes and fixing them that is so important. If they never mess up they can never analyze. True joy in the math classroom comes from struggling and perseverance.

Reflections (Part 2 - Semester Two of School Year 2015-2016)

This semester was a huge step in the right direction for me as a teacher. I really went out of my comfort zone with some new apps and programs to motivate students and increase mathematical thinking. My favorite math app/program is definitely Desmos. I heard about the graphing calculator program a few years ago but just didn’t have the resources in the classroom to push using this program especially when at the time it basically did what our TI-83 calculators were capable of computing. However, later this year when I saw all kinds of great posts on Twitter from the #MTBoS group I knew I had to check it out. After doing a little research and thinking about when I could use this in my classroom I decided to start with my quadratics section in my Math 2 Honors class. My first activity builder was for the topic changing forms of quadratic functions. The awesome thing about Desmos Activity Builder is you can make a copy of someone else’s activity and edit it to fit the needs of your classroom. After testing out our first activity I realized this program is definitely going in my bag of tricks for the years to come. I can’t wait to see all the new features Desmos will come out with in the future.

Another resource I tried one time but will 100% use again is NearPod. This program is amazing!! It can be time consuming if you are a perfectionist like I can be at times. The NearPod that I created was pretty cool I’d have to say because it was a lesson on quadratics involving a game of Angry Birds, a video on YouTube, and a graphing activity through Desmos. I pretty much used every trick I had to see just how far that would take me with my students and I succeeded. My students loved every minute of the lesson and were engaged from beginning to end. This coming year I plan to create more NearPod lessons I'm just not sure if I want to use them as a recap for each unit or individual lessons.

My greatest accomplishment this past semester was trying standards based grading. I always thought this was such a hard way of grading but found it pretty simple and very informative. I was able to see exactly where each student was falling short and knew the areas in which I could help them grow. I love the idea now I just need to figure out the best way to carry it out.

A few other things I did this past semester that were a success:

• Guided notes completely filled in except for examples (students only have to highlight important info)
• Explain Everything (allowed my to annotate over top of my guided notes & save as pdf files)
• Google doc (contains links to all course materials - notes, practice, quiz, test)
• Organized notebook with tabs & guided notes

• Card sorts (quadratics & exponential/logarithmic sections)
• Use whiteboard & dry erase markers
• Square roots with the number line (clothesline) activity
• Human box-whisker plot
• Whiteboard templates (quadratic formula/completing the square/factoring trinomials)
• Jinga Review

Things I learned from semester two:

• I still need work on differentiation in my classroom
• Desmos is a great mathematical tool (must use frequently)
• NearPod is a great app to keep students on track with where you are in the lesson & formative assessment
• ThatQuiz is amazing for students to get immediate feedback on practice
• Need to fix standard based grading (grade percentage & retake process)
• Guided notes completely filled out really saves time (must change all notes this way)
• Need to be consistent with classroom management
• When students know they can’t be denied bathroom privileges they take advantage of you (figure out a method to help this situation or just give up & don’t care anymore - I stress out about this because I get so annoyed when I’m interrupted in the middle of the lesson)
• Log sheet to keep up with where students go when they ask to leave room is a must keep (make them fill it out because you will not do it if you are busy or in middle of teaching)
• Tardy forms are a must keep (need to make it a habit of getting them out of the box daily & record who was tardy for each class)
• Do not let students be disrespectful; cut it off immediately do not second guess yourself
• Find teachers who want to share in your journey no matter where they teach or where they live (everyone needs motivation and accountability)

Reflections (Part 1 - Semester One of School Year 2015-2016)

Well my plan was to reflect on my teaching all year long but changing my teaching style in the middle of the year caused me to put the blogging on hold. This year was so stressful at times; it was all I could do to keep my head above the water. Although, in the end it was all worth it being able to see all the amazing things I accomplished this year in the classroom. This is the first in a series of reflections for the year. I may not remember every little detail from this school year but I want documentation for the highlights that I do remember so in the years to come I can see the progress I’ve had over the years.

When last school year ended I was searching for more; wanting to finding something that would help my students learning and increase their grades. That year I had several informal meetings with my assistant principal about my progress in the classroom and a lot of our meetings ended in the conclusion that I needed to work on differentiation among my students. With that in mind I spent my summer working on transitioning my quizzes and tests into a differentiated style so that no students would be left behind. The quiz was designed so that if you chose option 1 (EOC Word Problems) you received a 100, option 2 (Content Calculations) you received an 85, and option 3 (Content Notes or Rules) you received a 70.

I thought this process was awesome at the time but when I brought it into the class I think it confused students way more than anything else. I think we may have continued this process for the first three quizzes. Luckily I came across a website called ThatQuiz that allowed me to create my own online assessments and the website graded the assignment.

I’m so blessed that I found this resource because I could focus my efforts in other more important areas since I gained all the time back that I would have been grading assessments for the year. This program offers multiple choice, matching, and slides. Check back soon for more detailed information on the website ThatQuiz.

For the remaining portion of semester one technology became my focus. I started thinking in the direction of a flipped classroom and tried this process for a few months. I was using educreations to create video lessons for each standard and using ThatQuiz for formative (practice - non graded) and summative (quiz/test - graded) assessments. The positives that I found in a flipped classroom were that each student had the opportunity to experience learning in an individualized manner and students could learn at their own pace. The negative I found was the learning process overall for the class was so chaotic. I found myself struggling to help every student because they were all at different places in the curriculum and always had different questions. While other teachers may find this is not an issue I could not handle this process emotionally due to all the stress; so towards the end of semester one I tried hard to bring back all my students in a group style instruction. I still continued to allow students to push forward into the new content if they were ready but we did large group instruction at the start of each new topic to keep students focused and more homogeneous. The semester ended ok in my opinion but I still had a lot to tweak in order to make this technology process work for all.

Things I learned from semester one:

• I still need work on differentiation in my classroom
• Technology is my friend
• I’m not ready for a completely flipped classroom
• Most students enjoy technology
• Some students are nervous/unsure of technology and still need regular resources
• Students rushed through some assignments that were on the computer and refused to work out problems like I wanted; need to fix issue
• Do not use only technology to interest students... some like hands on activities, direct instruction, guided practice, etc.; keep it well rounded
• Need to work on classroom management
• Do not let students be disrespectful; cut it off immediately do not second guess yourself
• MTBoS rocks keep connected and growing in this profession; you need it to survive

Never ending technology ideas...

So this school year started out really different for me... I wanted my classroom and teaching to stand out in a way it never has before. I wanted my students to say "wow I didn't know you could do this in a math class" or "Ms. Bradshaw you make math fun". I wanted them to learn, to really understand and make connections beyond just a process. So if that meant I had to change my mindset and go after things I never had before then that's what I'd do. 

Technology... That's where I'd start my transformations. But boy did I not realize how many ideas and resources there were out there. Ideas from using technology to enhance learning like graphing (with @desmos) to using technology for simplifying teachers daily tasks like grading (with thatquiz.org). It's like a buffet of never ending choices. You can take what you want, then go back for seconds or even third and fourths. The trick is to break between ideas much like you should do while eating from a buffet. Never eat so fast or get too much that you fill up quickly and get sick. That's where I messed up in the beginning. I started out in a sprint. I was so consumed by the technology that my life was passing me by and I didn't even realize it. I became so overwhelmed and stressed that I started to pull away completely. But luckily the #MTBoS kept me motivated and focused on my goal. The goal to impact students' lives. To intrigue them and bring about curiosity. Here are a few ways I have started to introduce technology into my classroom. 

1) Teacher Aide - Attendance and grading resource. This first one is for me and making my life simpler. I used to do this on paper and hated how every time a new student joined my class it threw off the balance of my attendance records or grading sheets. The names were no longer in order. Ahhhh annoying!! Now when new students enroll I can simply add there name and it gets alphabetized for me with no extra work. When I go to enter grades into PowerSchool I just scroll down and enter my grades from top to bottom with no skipping or getting out of order by mistake. Grades can be categorized and weighted. You can run reports on the class or an individual student. Attendance is enter just by clicking on there name. You have the option to choose present, absent, or late. You can also add a category like not enrolled. I use this category so that students who enroll later in the semester are not counted absent for the days prior to being enrolled in my class. This keeps the count correct for absences. Another great feature is you can upload student photos so taking attendance is such a breeze. No need to look for names just scan the faces and mark absent those missing in class. Lastly all reports can be exported by email and with the option for viewing as a spreadsheet.

2) Educreations - Interactive whiteboard. I love this app but I've only just started using it. I upgraded so I can import word documents, pictures, and google maps. I used the program to show a quick video slideshow of pictures of me and how I spent my summer for a first day "get to know your teacher" activity. The next time I used this in class was for showing shapes of graphs with real world example pictures. This is not just a whiteboard, you can also record your own voice to give a more detailed description of the images or work you are explaining. I just recently created a mini lesson on combining like terms. I'm pretty excited to see how students will take to the "flipped" classroom idea. I don't want all my lessons to be done using technology but I think this will be a great resource for review or for students that struggle with focusing during class. This gives them the opportunity to learn at their own pace. I'm also thinking that this is a great way to get parents involved in the learning process. I know many times parents want to help their children with homework or studying but just don't understand the material. So maybe using these videos they can learn and understand the concepts, then they can explain it to their children. 

3) Quizlet - Online flash cards and study tool for students. I learned about quizlet from a teacher that teaches medical classes next door to me. She has been using quizlet for a few years now and I've seen how motivated her students get with studying using this app. So of course I had to try it. I started with the basic term and definition cards but I wanted more. I upgraded to be able to import pictures so that my students could visual see the concepts along side the definitions. I've been using word to create the images to match the term. My students seem to really enjoy this tool because it helps them study and they can play games like scatter "matching" or race. They are also timed and score points which helps create a little good competition among students. With the upgraded teacher version you can also view your students progress which is very help to see who is studying and which terms might need more attention for review than others. 

These are just a few ideas that I'm currently using. Check back for part two of this post on some other ideas like desmos, thinglink, and YouTube that I'm learning more about. Hope this post motivates some of you to take the time and learn more about all the new technology and resources available for your classroom. 

God Bless!!