Reviewing Exponent Rules with "The Zombie Game" and the Alice Portfolio

I was looking for some ideas over the weekend and ran across this blog post by Sarah Hagan (Math=Love). The post includes alot of great ideas but the one that I borrowed came from yet another blog post by Nathan Kraft. I have really gotten so many great ideas from the teachers I follow on Twitter and through my Feedly blog reader! I am so thankful for teachers who are so willing to share their resources and ideas with others.

So, today was the first day back after Spring Break and I wanted to review problems using exponent rules. I borrowed some individual white boards from Ms. Whitt and gave one to each student. I had my students go write their names on my board and put 4 x's under each name. The last student with an x under his/her name wins. I gave the class a problem to work and had them put their markers down after a certain period of time. Any student who gets an answer correct gets to go erase an 'x' from any person's name. The "zombie" part comes when students have all 4 of their x's erased. Even though they can no longer win the game, they can still erase x's from others.  I will give the winners 5 bonus points on the next quiz grade. Ms. Whitt and I did go over how to work each problem afterwards.

I altered what my students will be doing for the Alice portfolio. Due to time constraints we chose to skip some of the activities that were mentioned in the portfolio list in the book. I created my own Alice Portfolio assignment. I borrowed some items from the Meaningful Math version of the portfolio. I do not necessarily think that mine is better; it just was a better fit for me this year since we had to cut some of the activities.

Solving Equations Scavenger Hunt - Thanks Mr. Webb

It is great to have fellow algebra teachers that share their fun activities! Mr. Webb is another algebra teacher at Etowah High School and he made a scavenger hunt using QR codes in which the students had to solve equations in order to find the missing digits in the next room number. He bought cupcakes for the winners and we also awarded bonus points to the top 2 teams (everyone got a grade for participating). So during 5th period today we combined our  classes and created random teams of students.  Each team got a paper with a QR code that gave them an equation to solve in order to get the next room number.  They ran all over the school!

They had to get the room numbers in the correct sequence to win so they often returned to my checkpoint a little frustrated...

They do eventually get the hang of it though and they seemed to have alot of fun too! This was a great way to spend the last class of the day on the Friday before Spring Break! (And I got to eat a cupcake too!!)

Thank you again Mr. Webb for creating this activity and sharing with us!

Winners eating their cupcakes:)

Kahoot! - educational and fun - especially for reviewing

Today we were delayed for 3 hours so there were several students who were absent. Also, we did not meet with all of our classes and I like to keep my classes together (for my sanity!) so I did not want to move forward with the next lesson. I was thinking about pulling some standardized-test style questions and reviewing. I was just going to project them on the board and have them work on them using the ipads (educreations app) or the small whiteboards. BUT then I remembered how much fun my students from last year had playing Kahoot! for reviewing.

Coach Whitt explaining a problem from a Kahoot!

Fortunately I ran across a wonderful Kahoot when I did a "public search" for graphing equations. It had 16 questions that reviewed finding slope, graphing, finding intercepts, and evaluating functions. I was able to use it with my Algebra IB for review and in my Algebra IA to reinforce concepts we are currently working on.

These 2 guys were working together:)

I realized last year that when we worked through Kahoots which makes the review feel like a game the students invested in trying to learn how to get the correct answer so they can get the points for the next question. After each question the game shows who the leader is and you also have the opportunity to stop and go over the question. Today I gave the winning player 2 pieces of candy and all the other players on the "leader board" 1 piece of candy. It was a fun and productive day.

If you have never used Kahoot! it is great for all subjects and grade levels. You can create your own reviews or you can do a public search for ones that have already been created. There are sometimes mistakes in the public reviews but I just use them and then address any mistakes as they come. My husband showed me last year where the writers of the Kahoot! website even recommend you have students to create their own reviews for the class to play. That is also a great way to see if your students have a clear understanding of the material. Last year I had the students to use their own smartphones. There is a code that they use to log into the game - they do not have to have an account to play. I let students share if they needed to. Today I had 9 ipads for the students who didn't have smartphones so it went great!