Solving Equations – Infinitely Teaching

Choose Your Own Adventure, Geometry, Google Forms, Solving Equations

Choose Your Own Adventure Updated

June 22, 2018 Mandi

A lesson is only as good as the updates you make. This activity, which I first blogged about here and here, came from Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller. I love this idea and now use it as an alternative assessment activity. Please go back and read how this started for me.

One reason I love this activity so much is because it gives students choice and freedom of topic, they become the teacher so they learn the content more deeply, they peer edit which is a very crucial skill, and this year I added a Flipgrid component in collaboration with another school.

I have updated my planning documents a little. They are posted on the posts, but this will be the most up-to-date document I have. I have also created a Google Slide presentation so very little teacher direction is needed. Another update I made this year was to increase the level of peer editing. Students do not intuitively know how to do this, so I updated the document so they have a little more guidance. Lastly, and probably the most exciting part for me, was creating these CYOA stories for a sister class in another district. We sent them our completed stories and then each student left feedback via Flipgrid. We’ve sent our stories to this district before but having video Feedback through Flipgrid was amazing and meant a lot more for my students.

I’ve included some fun examples from this year. I encouraged my Geometry students to create circular images as part of the story. You can check the links above for examples from previous years including some Algebra 1 examples.

Including the Flipgrid responses from our sister school was an amazing addition. My students loved seeing the faces and hearing their reviewers. It also made the audience “authentic” to them. We did get permission from their parents for my students to view them but we did not include releasing it publically so I can’t share the link to the grid. I’ve included a screenshot of the grid below.

Screen Shot 2018-06-22 at 8.10.36 PM

You can find a link to my resources below.

Planning Guide – 2018 CYOA Scoring Guide-Algebra

2018 Choose Your Own Adventure Planning Guide-Geometry

Slide Presentation –

Student Peer Review Document – 2018 CYOA Scoring Guide-Algebra

2018 CYOA Scoring Guide-Geometry

Here is an example of a peer review. In my experience, you need to model this for your students. I have, in the past, peer-edited my own story with the class so they see what to look for.

Screen Shot 2018-06-22 at 8.20.25 PM

Please give credit to Matt Miller and me if you use this idea. It has been a fabulous learning experience in my classroom and I look forward to the next update!

BreakoutEDU, Solving Equations

Solar Eclipse Breakout

August 13, 2017 Mandi

This is a cross-post with Make Math Not Suck

The Total Solar Eclipse happens at the beginning of our school year. Since we will still be in the introduction/relationship building phase and won’t have learned new content, I wanted to create a BreakoutEDU that included prior knowledge. I searched online to see if any already existed and stumbled upon a digital one created by Wendy Lentz. I loved it, but my students won’t have their Chromebooks yet, so I needed one that wasn’t 100% reliant on technology. I also wanted to incorporate math. I did borrow her video and Google Form (with her permission) and included it in my Breakout. Definitely check out Wendy’s! She did an amazing job.

Eclipse_emblem_photorealistic_Golden — Downloads from NASA https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/downloadables

I plan to do this with my Freshman. You can adapt it for any age you like. I’ve linked to the folder with all of my resources. You will need to make a copy to edit. The form will not be editable for you but you can email me if you would like the ability to edit.

My breakout needs a small, medium, and large box. It uses the following locks: 3-digit, two 4-digit, 4- letter, 5-letter, directional, & a keyed padlock.

You will also need a Chromebook or iPad and black light with marker. I have included instructions to make red-letter code glasses and you will need red cellophane and cardstock to make those.

Please let me know if you use it and/or tag me in your photos on Twitter (@TTmomTT). I love to see students using resources I’ve shared.

proofs, Solving Equations, technology

Drag & Drop with Google Slides & Draw

November 29, 2015 Mandi

When we got our iPads, I wanted some interactive activities for my students. Using Pages, I created my first drag & drop activity. When we transitioned to Chrome, I also transitioned my platform. I started using Google Draw. I created one page proofs for students to practice with, taken from a paper activity I used year after year.

Screen Shot 2015-11-28 at 11.09.08 PM

Once I figured out how to force a copy for slides (now Classroom does it for me!) I started making multiple practice pages with slides. Now I have a huge selection of activities that I use with all of my classes. I’ve shared some below.

Geometry Proofs (see above)

Performance Event

Solving Equations

Protractor Practice

Writing Linear Equations

Students love using these activities, especially the Solving Equations & Writing Equations when they can work at their own pace. I used both of these as remediation for standards students were stuck on. It was a success! I hope you find some inspiration with these and begin making some of your own. Please share if you do!

Google Forms, PBL, Solving Equations

Choose Your Own Adventure Project with Google Forms

September 20, 2015April 22, 2020 Mandi

You know when you find a project and you think, “This could be a fun project that my students could benefit from”, and then you get the results from your students and it was a flop? Well this isn’t that type of project. I was blown away by some of the stories my students created. I don’t have all of them listed below because they have to correct their mistakes before I will publish them, but they can keep correcting until it’s ready for the public eye. Check back, I’ll add more as they become available.

I can’t take all the credit for this project. The original idea came from @jmattmiller in his book Ditch That Textbook. I did make the scoring guide and the planning sheet to help students create this. Matt also has a video on his site that would be a good resource also.

Now Matt teaches Spanish and I teach Math, but the basic idea of Choose Your Own Adventure is present and could be adapted for any content area. My students had to have 5 equations, a good story line, images, & explanations of misconceptions if a player choose the wrong answer. We started by writing the story on the planning pages. It’s a lot easer to type this into Google Forms if you already have your story and equations in place on the planning page. I also included instructions about how to enter the information into forms on the back of the planning pages.

My scoring guide is based on our SBL. Our non-math standards include Quality of Work, Completeness of Work and Timeliness, basic skills an employer would want. We also assess based on our Math standards from our curriculum. You may take my scoring guide and adjust it to fit your curriculum.

I have the Docs set up to make a copy when you click on them.

Planning Page

Scoring Guide

Now for some awesomeness. (Disclaimer – some didn’t follow copyright and snagged images from Google. We did talk about this but some chose the easier path)

Journey to Be A Mage (all images drawn by student)

Treasure Map (in the Spirit of TLAP – @burgessdave would love this one)

interactive notebooking, Solving Equations

Literal Equations -sad face

September 4, 2014 Mandi

This is one lesson that students absolutely HATE. I feel like this year was better than most, and I’m hoping it was the interactive notebooking process that helped. Having said that, students still struggled, and I mean a lot, with rearranging equations. I created my own resources for this lesson (WHAT???) and was pretty excited about teaching it. it wasn’t until I was walking around as students were working in groups until I realized that the lesson had the same result (for some groups) as in previous years. When solving an equation for y, students were “magically” eliminating the x by incorrectly combining like terms. We will just keep practicing…

The notebook looked good though 🙂 and I did have some success. It wasn’t a total failure.

The “Why do we solve literal equations” part is something I always talk about but I think putting it in writing helps. Since students think this process is awful, they should at least know why we do it.

Here are the goods, if you want them.

iPad Notes PDF

Literal Equations Flip Chart Word

Remember – get your free fonts so the Word document looks good. This one uses orange juice, one of my favorite (dafont.com is the bomb!)

interactive notebooking, Solving Equations

Solving Equations Part Two

September 3, 2014 Mandi

We split solving equations into two days. Our curriculum has solving equations as review, but our new standard adds the explain element to problem solving. I think it’s a good place to start the year. I used the rest of the foldable from Everybody is a Genius, and added a few other ideas found around the web (I can’t find the source now). I am also making files for my iPad so I can put the notes on my website for students who were absent or missed something during the process. I like how this is working out also!

The students are getting the process figured out and we aren’t taking as long getting items glued into the notebook. We also used our data tracking sheet for the first time this week. I’m excited to have the students enter their second assessment so they can see how much they have improved.

I have shared the link to my foldables (again, adapted from things I’ve seen on the web) and my pdf iPad files. Two of them are Word files but you can download the fonts for free. Just click in the font box to see what you need and head to the web for a search.

iPad Notes PDF

Distributive Property Foldable Word

Like Terms Word