Day 21 IMP - Kearney and Vermillion

Today I had my students finish To Kearney By Equation. We completed numbers 1 and 2 on Friday so they just needed to do numbers 3 and 4. I helped each class come up with an alternative formula where we used round trips for the profit equation instead of hours. This would have been a GREAT extension of the problem but I just kind of "happened" across it when I was trying to keep them from dealing with a fractional amount of time in hours. (That scares them!)

I almost led my 2nd block class astray because I asked them to compare which river crossing was cheaper between Kearney and Vermillion. THANKFULLY I caught onto the fact that in Kearney you are finding the amount of PROFIT for the Pappan Bros. and in Vermillion you are finding the amount it costs to cross the river. I was able to use this as a teaching point in both classes. We also defined formula and added it to the vocab list. I assigned Ox Expressions for homework and offered bonus points to the student who finds the most meaningful expressions...

**Hints for the future - I use what I have previously called Interactive Notebooks but since I have been using our new textbooks I have not been "giving notes" like I used to. We have not any more foldables...  However, the notebooks have come in handy because we create an entry for each activity in the table of contents and I hope it makes it easier for my students when it comes time to do their portfolios. In the future I would like to make a vocabulary entry at the beginning of each unit and leave enough room for them to go back and add vocab terms as we go through the lesson. Right now I have them listed and defined on chart paper in my room. However, when the unit is over I will take them down. I would like them to be able to have something to go back and review all vocab at once.

I have done ALOT of guiding (talking too much!) the last couple of class periods. My students still demonstrate their lack of number sense on a daily basis! I definitely need to work on my reactions so that I don't make crazy faces when they say something crazy! For some of the harder ideas I have a class discussion and the brightest 2 or 3 students end up answer the questions and "leading us home" to whatever idea I am looking for. I feel a little guilty about this but I am looking at it right now as an opportunity for my stronger math students to stretch. Once I guide them through questioning to whatever concept I am trying to reach I try to re-explain it to everyone. I am specifically referring to the "new formula" we developed for profit in Kearney which was profit = 2W-0.10T where T equals round trip. I thought this formula was easier to use but I tried to not just GIVE them the formula...