Day 63: Battleship

I was hanging out with a teacher friend and trying to figure out what I was going to do on Friday when she tells me about Battleship. It's not Battleship in the sense you're probably thinking, but it's fantastic.

The goal: Get kids to practice and help each other so everyone understands the confusing concepts for the test.

The game: Each group got a list of problems to work through. Everyone at the table is working on the same problem. If everyone gets it right the first time and I don't have to provide assistance, the kids get to either blow up two blocks on other ships or repair one of the blocks on their ship. If they get it wrong on the first try but fix it the second time, they can blow up one block. If they need me to explain it, they don't get to blow anything up, but they can move on to the next problem.

The kids loved it. It was hilarious because I didn't tell the class which group was which ship so their self motivated goal was to figure out which boat was the team they wanted to attack.

1st period's winner

2nd Period's winner

3rd period's winner

Three way tie in 4th period

VERY close game in 6th. They played the adding blocks back strategy.

lots of thinking

Math should always be done on Darth Vader's face.

Such smarties!

I did have a kid at the end of the day tell me that she didn't like it because her group left her behind. I'm always looking for ways to improve this problem but haven't figured it out yet.

Day 62: New Birthday Outfits

One of the kids got my extra tiara out and we decided it needs to be the birthday crown. Now in my class, everyone gets to be a princess on their birthday...even the boys. I promise we learn math every day too.

Day 61: Lots of Triangle Practice

The kids needed practice with right triangles. When I threw both trig and inverse trig at them, they freaked out. After an hour of practicing, we started to understand the differences and when to use which trig function.

Here's a few of the ones I had them work through.

Day 60: 4th Period's Arguments

So one student in 4th period loves the other PreCal teacher. Another student hates that teacher and loves me. This brings up hilarious arguments in class daily. I am clearly supporting the second student. :)

The kids really shouldn't lie.

Obviously.

Day 59: Fixing Misunderstandings

It was split about 50/50 whether we sucked on our test or not. Clearly there were some things we needed to work on before we could continue through trigonometry. I passed the tests back on Monday at the beginning of class and had them sit in groups based on which version of the test they took. They worked together with their table to figure out why they missed certain things. Lots of things were cleared up for my kids, and I love seeing them teach each other.

Day 58: We tease each other...often.

I made the kids listen to Frozen, and one student was VERY upset by this in a joking way, of course. I teased her. She teased me back. After class I noticed my board and realized she had won the teasing match for today. Low blow child. #dontmesswithFrozen haha

too far kid. too far.

Day 56 and 57: Speed Dating

I needed to review trig with the children and wanted a fun and different way to do that. Kate has blogged about Speed Dating in her classroom and I've wanted to try it. SO we did. 

It was magical with all the children working and asking me and each other lots of questions. I also had a principal in my room watching this. AWESOME! :)

Day 55: Right Triangle Trigonometry

Lots of practice today!

Day 54: Memorization FREAK OUT

Found this when I was grading notebooks. The student has written ways to memorize sin, cos, tan, csc, sec, cot over and over and over. This is clearly in response to me scaring the children: You will not get to use your notebook on the test this week.

Day 53: Raider Stars

Being senior class sponsor means getting to come up to school early on a Saturday morning and paint stars on the ground.

Day 52: Last Pep Rally

Playing wrap the student at the pep rally means my student looks like this. :)

Day 51: Grading tests

I love great explanations. They give me encouragement that I am doing a good job and I love seeing how different kids are thinking about things.

Day 50: Is it Thanksgiving yet??

Being exhausted makes us crankier than normal. Starbucks makes this a little better. Thanksgiving needs to hurry!

Day 49: Phones vs. Calculators

"Ms. H! Her new phone is as big as a calculator! I would never want to carry around a phone that big!"

Day 48: College!

One of my class officers brought this to show me today! She got into Kansas! I am such a mom to these kids. On one hand I am super excited for them and on the other I am afraid to release them into adulthood. Love them all so much!

Day 47: HALLOWEEN!

Kid 1 points on Kid 2's project from another class. 

Day 46: Wait, I'm still confused about Radians.

The kids were still getting lost on what radians are and why we're using them to measure angles. I found this great blog post here about radians that used cut outs to help them see the different fractions a little better.

It worked like magic.

I asked them to form different angles with normal and improper fractions. I also asked how many different ways can we form certain angles. We were able to practice fractions in a way that wasn't quite so scary, and it helped their understanding SO MUCH!

And senior women gave all the teachers sweet treats! :)

Day 44: HOSA comes to visit

We're discovering right triangles again, but I didn't really need the entire time. HOSA needed to practice taking other people's blood pressures, so they came and practiced for a couple of minutes. It was fun to see some of my kids in their element!