Meaningful Practice

If there is one resource I would recommend it is Kagan: thoroughly, wholeheartedly its Kagan.  I stocked up our teacher resource library at our school this summer have been enjoying their ideas to make my classroom a bit more interesting ever since.

We are working on our number unit in year 8 at the moment and studying decimals.  I was getting a bit bored with decimals, I mean the real world connections can only be so exciting before students start to resent adding up shopping items or items at a restaurant.  Kagan suggested something called a round table activity.  It was simple, it was not an example of how us maths teachers try to convince our students, "honestly!!  You will use this in your personal lives!!!!"  It was rather a simple activity, which took me about 5 minutes to plan and had my whole class chatting, working, engaging in meaningful work.  And with a few years under my belt, those meaningful and engaging lessons mean more to me then the few times I can make those superficial real work connections, because lets face it, I use my phone calculator when I am in a supermarket more often then I should probably admit.  So, the activity was simple.  I wrote out a number of slips of papers with x= a decimal and y= a decimal and that is the only resource you need for this activity.

1)  I tell students to work with their shoulder partner.  Students are sitting in table of four so they were to decide who will be partner 1 and who will be partner 2.

2)  Then I wanted to create a cheesy buzz, so I asked partner 1 to tell the person beside them their favourite feature about them.  Then I asked partner 2 to tell partner 1 their favourite memory of the other.  awwwwwww.

3)  Students were given the slip of paper and I told them that they would take turns answering questions.  If it was your turn you would answer the question on a white board whilst your partner watched.  If you got it right, your partner would praise you and tell you that it was correct.  If you did not get it right, your partner would coach you, help you find your mistake and reach the right answer.

4)  I then proceeded to call out things like x+y, x squared, y divided by x until I thought the activity had run its course.

It was great fun for me, because all of my groups were engaging in practicing their decimal work and the students enjoyed the change from a traditional lesson.