Powerpoint Math

It has been a couple of crazy weeks as we wind down to Christmas.  I have been trying to keep the students as engaged as possible.  In math the other day I decided to teach the lesson and then divide the class into groups.  Rather than have them do a worksheet, I put the questions on PowerPoint (1 question per slide) and I gave the groups chart paper, mini white boards and markers.  They were in groups of three or four so each person had something to write on and write with.  I gave the groups 5-10 minutes per question, depending on the difficulty of the question, and once I figured the majority of the class had it figured out I moved on to the next slide.  We went through nine questions that I had just pulled from the textbook.  Once we had gone through all the questions I had one person from each group do question #1 on the board, we then discussed and corrected the answers.  Then a different student from the group had to come to do the next question, so on and so forth.  Doing this at the end put accountability on each student to be involved throughout the PowerPoint work.  I made sure that I knew which questions my at-risk student understood how to do, and volunteered him for that particular question(s) before anyone else in his group could volunteer.

Learning about ratios with hands on

This morning I taught my ratios lesson on the floor with my class sitting in a circle each with a piece of paper and a pencil.  We started by discussing what ratios were and using the class, boys to girls, as our starting point.  I wrote a few points on the board as we were discussing and they copied them down.  Once I felt they had the idea, I took a box of Halloween mixed chocolate bars and dumped them on the floor in the middle of the circle.  At that point I put six different scenarios on the board (kit-kat - smarties, coffee crisp- aero, kit-kat to all chocolate bars) and asked them to write the ratios in different forms on their paper.  The were practising part-part ratios, part-whole ratios, and 3-term ratios.  They were also practising converting fractions, decimals and percents.  They were discussing and problem solving individually and as groups. Once they completed it on their paper, I had volunteers write their answers on the board and we would then compare and discuss as a class.   All the students were interested and very involved in the lesson.