Cookies - A Simpler Cookie thru What's My Inequality

My personal life has been turned upside down. I enjoy blogging about our new curriculum. I look forward to being able to look back next year in order to help me when we go through a 2nd time. However, when I have to cut some things out because of a lack of time blogging is the first thing cut. The thing is...blogging just helps me to organize my thoughts and see where I have been and where I am going. I think I might could really be diagnosed with ADHD...I doubt that any of my colleagues would disagree. I am kind of joking but I really do think it is true. Forcing myself to focus and "verbalize" what I am doing with my classes helps me to reflect and think. So...here is a brief summary of what we have done so far in Cookies.

How Many of Each Kind? - The students brainstorm the number of dozens of iced and plain cookies that meet the 4 constraints that are mentioned.

A Simpler Cookie - This activity allows the students to only worry about prep time. They assume unlimited amounts of dough, icing and oven space. Then they are asked to try to find the most profit. We believed the max profit in this case was 150 plain and 0 iced.

Manipulating Inequalities - This activity allowed the students to "discover" the rules for solving inequalities. They also practice graphing inequalities in one variable. When going over #3 ask the students what would make the inequalities where you multiplied or divided by a negative "ok" again.

My Simplest Inequality - In Part I the students practice solving inequalities in one variable. We supplemented with an additional worksheet on solving and graphing one-variable inequalities. In Part II we investigated equivalent inequalities. Then in #3 we took inequalities and wrote them in simpler ways.

Simplifying Cookies - In this activity you take the Cookies Constraints and write them as simpler inequalities. We did not spend much time on this but I did write the simpler inequalities on chart paper.

Picturing Cookies - In this activity students take the constraints and use 2 colors to indicate ordered pairs that either work or do not work for the cookies constraints. They will hopefully recognize a "dividing line" that halves the graphs into correct solutions and incorrect solutions. I gave each group one constraint to test and had them put it on chart paper after they did it individually on graph paper.

Inequalities Stories - I gave this as a bonus opportunity...

A Hat of a Different Color - This POW was assigned when I had a sub. I think it would be a good idea to use hats or objects and act out the situation a few times in class before the students try to figure out the color of Carletta's hat. Her hat is blue. If Arturo couldn't tell then the 2 girls could NOT have both had red hats. One of them must have been blue. If Belicia had opened her eyes and seen a red hat on Carletta she would have known her hat was blue. However, since she passed Carletta must have been wearing a blue hat.

Healthy Animals - You create 3 inequalities - one for fat, one for protein and one for total amount. I did not have my class graph this activity.

**Picturing Cookies - Part II - We used this to "reteach" graphing using slope-intercept form. We used Desmos to show the graphs but I don't know if I should have waited on the technology... Anyway, it is extremely important to have each student to graph these correctly and identify the feasible region. They will need it to solve the unit problem. I did the graph on chart paper and left it hanging in the room.

What's My Inequality - I really liked this activity to help us tie the work in the unit to "traditional algebra problems." This is the first time the text mentions the differences in when to make the line solid and when to make the line dashed.

My purple sky is very cloudy

Ever since December 24th the forecast at my house has been cloudy. My husband hurt his back and can't sit or walk without crutches. He can't teach or coach. He has only left the house for doctor's appointments and literally has to lie in the floor of the waiting rooms.  It is crazy how I just can't seem to function when he isn't himself. My world is turned upside down.  We have 3 children and 2 of them play sports (the 3rd one is 3) so we are always on the go.  Our schedule is hectic when we are both 100 percent.  The hardest part though is leaving him laying there by himself knowing he will be by himself all day...frustrated and discouraged. I am so thankful to have an incredible network of family and friends to help support us. Blogging about teaching has become very unimportant to me right now... I hope to have a desire to continue soon. This too shall pass. We are praying for God's guidance as we seek a way to help him to be pain free again.

Survival Mode...perfect for December!

I don't know if anyone else does this but there are times that I have to enter full blown "survival mode." This is when I am on overload either personally, professionally or BOTH and I have to take my foot off the gas pedal for a while. I know in the first line I said that I don't know if anyone else does this...but in my heart I believe that everyone does this (or at least needs to) from time to time. If you have never given yourself permission to do so and you are feeling overwhelmed heading into Christmas break now is a perfect time to try it.

Another way that one of my teacher friends describe this time is a "mental health day." This is a good one when you are in the middle of the semester and so far behind on grading that you can't even see the top of your desk anymore. This is where you take a day and actually give your students work that they can do without you...even if it is the dreaded review worksheet. Then you take that day to catch up. Sometimes your family life and/or coaching responsibilities make it impossible for you to spend extra time working on your school work in the afternoons or evenings. If you find yourself in a season like that give yourself permission to pause, take a breath, and catch up. If your administration is as awesome as mine they will understand!

I must confess that if anyone comes in my room when I am in this mode I feel the necessity to explain what is going on...LOL.

IMP Days 48-49 Finishing Overland Trail

The last 2 class days we have been trying to finish Overland Trail. I will start Cookies after Christmas! I have had to skip a few activities here toward the end which hurts my feelings! I did the in-class and take home assessments that come with the book. I will let you know how they went.  My semester exams are going to be their portfolios.

IMP Day 47 - The Mystery Bags Game and More Mystery Bags

Today my students completed 2 "mystery bag" activities. These activities are designed to provide a contextual understanding of solving equations. I have used an activity that used the idea of using a balance before but there wasn't a story to go with it. Once again I believe the context helped my students to grasp hold of the concept. Supposedly my students learned how to solve all types of equations last year. I could definitely tell that they were better at solving equations than previous years. However, I retaught solving equations before we started our new books.

The IMP Mystery Bag activities assumes that students have already been exposed to solving equations. Doing this activity makes me wonder how many times it takes our students to see a topic for them to retain it.

IMP Day 46 - Fair Share for Hired Hands

Today we finished discussing Fair Share on Chores. Then we worked on Fair Share for Hired Hands. Both of these activities start with a situation where the students will write an equation that starts in standard form due to the way the problem is read. Then they are asked to describe in words how to find one of the "unknowns" if you know the other. The cool thing is that the next question asks them to then write it in equation form. It is a neat approach because the context helps the students to identify mistakes.

At the beginning of the activity the students are asked to explore the problem numerically. One strategy I have encouraged my students to do is to brainstorm WITHOUT erasing. I want them to write down things they try or ideas they have and just put a line through them if they decide they are incorrect. This helps them to keep track of what they tried. When they are working on their POWs they are asked to explain their process and write about what they have tried. I loved the work of the student whose paper is pictured below because she did keep track of her brainstorming.

Mr. Webb gave me an idea today. One of the issues I am having with using our new textbooks is the amount of time it takes to do each activity. You can really go in depth and spend some time exploring and discussing these activities. He said that when there are 2 lessons that are similar he pretty much  walks them through the first one as a class activity and then assigns the 2nd one for them to work on in their groups. I feel like this is a great idea especially since we started the book 7 weeks into the year so we are already trying to find activities that we can skip in order to cover.

IMP Day 45 - Fair Share on Chores

Today we started the last section in Overland Trail.  The activity was Fair Share on Chores. This activity builds on the creating equations concepts that we have already done in this unit.  However it looks like the authors are beginning to develop the concept of solving literal equations.

My classes were given 30 minutes to finish their POW #4 at the beginning of class.