My plan was to write a bi-monthly blog entry but somehow I missed the last couple of weeks. Intentions were good but something, not sure what (report cards, marking, prepping, phone calls, Paul constantly checking up on me, responding to Jim's emails, etc.) got in the way. Anyways, here I am on a quiet Saturday night after report cards finally getting around to my post. A lot has happened at TVA the last little few weeks.
In my classroom we are spending a lot of time working with equations. We have already mastered the art of solving simple equations by inspection so it was time to move on to the next step..... balancing equations. While I love algebra, my students in the past have always struggled with this particular skill. Introducing... Algebra Tiles. I'll let Wikipedia give
you all the details but to summarize, algebra tiles are manipulatives that represent variables and numbers in an equation. We first introduce algebra tiles in grade 7 when we look at adding integers and we teach the students the concept of the zero principle. This is a key concept when it comes to balancing equations later. We did this back in November with the 7's and we reviewed it again with the 8's. We left algebra tiles to move on to other math concepts only to return to it again, but this time with equations. This is where a spiralled curriculum is really cool. We are now revisiting and going deeper into a previously taught math concept. Hopefully all the students remembered the zero principle (they didn't). But it didn't take much of a refresher to forge ahead. After a couple of periods of working with equations and tiles, the students were slowly transitioned off the tiles and into numbers and equations. I did spend a lot of time here since this is such an important concept in our curriculum. I wanted to ensure that everyone understood this. I am proud to say as of Friday, every single student I teach (including my special education students) understood "balancing of equations". For the grade 7's we left off at balancing with multiplication and division while the 8's began solving for x squared.
Also at TVA, Paul Bisson has started a math council consisting of students, teachers, community partners and other educators. More on that in my next post.
Comments
Hi Kent, you are right May is fast approaching. The Ontario team is hard at work making plans for your visit. Details soon.
Hi Craig,
Great lesson.
May is approaching, have you connected with any other schools in Norway or in Norcan about what can be done to connect the students together?
Projects etc...
Thanks
Kent
#saucy!