IMP Day 30 - You're the Storyteller and POW writeups

Today I had some fun with my classes. We made a "contest" out of beating Mr. Webb's class on making creative stories for the equations in You're the Storyteller: From Rules to Situations. I had one group do a rap and another do a video depicting a bank robbery. They were really entertaining and the students who were brave enough to do them had fun and were proud! The other groups just wrote the stories on chart paper. The "stories" on the chart paper below were the ones who also did the rap and the skit! It was loud and rowdy in my room today but it was alot of fun!

**My 2nd block class didn't get as much time to "have fun" because they had to finish up the quadratic graphs for From Rules to Graphs. Only a few students completed their homework (which was to graph (Out=In^2). None of them had the "u-shape." I decided to do a graph on chart paper on the board. I only had room to go up to 25 on the y-axis so they they were limited to x-values between -5 and 5. This was an interesting activity. I asked each student (28 total) to share an ordered pair that they got on their homework. It didn't take long for us to use up all the integers. I did have one student who used a decimal even before the integers were taken up so I made the remark that he sure was thinking "outside the box." I also told them numerous times that there were an infinite number of possibilities. When the students started getting the hang of it and we got all 28 points on the chart paper the u-shape was evident. We then discussed the difference in the equation for this u-shaped graph compared to the other equations and they came to realize it was the "squared part." I thought this was a very good investigation and we were able to explore the ideas of continuity and "infinite possibilities."

The most impressive part of my day was when I read the Haybaler POW writeup written by one of my 5th period students. It was AMAZING! Talking about understanding the whole point of a write up in the first place! I was inspired and amused throughout her writing! Here is a piece of her write-up. The sentence on the previous page discussed how she must first make sure she completely understands what the problem is asking.

I have come to the point where the POW write-ups are my favorite part of the IMP book (at least for today!). When reading them it is extremely easy to realize who is comprehending the math and the problem-solving process. Some of them (unfortunately) are so far out in left field I can not figure out why they would write such stuff. However, there are many who are increasing their math and problem-solving fluency just by doing the write-ups and having to think and reflect about their work. The ones who are in left field will hopefully start getting closer as the year goes on!