## Reflections – Geometry Obj. 3 and 4, Algebra 3 Obj. 3

September 6, 2012

Okay, I’m now 2 for 4 (I think) for writing reflections on B-day, and 0 for 4 writing them during 8th period. **sigh**

Geometry Obj. 3
I adore my Point, Lines, and Planes foldable! It made one of my most-dreaded sections into something not quite so painful. When I figured out I was only going to have about half a period to do Points, Lines, and Planes, I knew I had to do something to the way I had always done it (traditional notes), so I figured out how to rearrange things so that they would work as a foldable. After talking it over with S (yay! she’s back at my school!), I got my layout finalized. Then, it was a matter of fussing with the details. I think the thing that I especially like about this foldable are the marks I put on the side to show where the fold should go. I wish I’d thought of that before!

I started off the class with a warm-up going over conditional and biconditional statements (writing the converse, inverse, and contrapositive), and then I went over the homework, which was pretty much the same thing. Then we had our first quiz, and then we did the foldable.

Geometry Obj. 4
Okay, I had dreams of doing Constructing Segments and Constructing Angles in one day. Not so much.

I had an idea the other day, so I thought I’d try it out: when I handed back the quiz, I also handed out copies of my key. Their warm-up was to make quiz corrections, and to see if they could figure out where they went wrong. This worked really well! For one thing, it encouraged students to actually look at the quiz, instead of just looking at the grade and then throwing it away. Also, I informed/reminded them that since I let them use their notes on quizzes, if they corrected this quiz, it then became “notes” that they could use on future quizzes. Incentive!

Since I had been giving them holey notes, I decided it was time for them to take some actual notes. So for this lesson, they did a mathy version of Cornell notes. I also introduced construction (and gave my “Sharp Pointy Object Speech” as I handed out compasses) and we practiced constructing congruent segments and midpoints. One of my favorite parts occurred because I realized I had a little bit of time left (but not enough to start Constructing Angles), so we did a Kagan activity, “Draw What I Say”. In a group of students, one student drew a card that had a description of a figure (ex. “Point $E$ is the midpoint of $\overline{MB}$“). The student would read the card to the other member(s) of the group who would then try to draw it based on his description. The card has a diagram of what the picture should look like, so the reading student knows what to look for. Very cool activity.

Algebra 3 Obj. 1-2 Quiz
As I think will become my habit, I made copies of my solutions on bright pink paper for them to check their homework, and I then went over any additional questions they had. The main questions, somewhat distressingly, centered around converting from standard form to slope-intercept form and writing the equation of a line. They took the quiz, and I handed out the first problem set.

Algebra 3 Obj. 3
As I did with Geometry (and for the same reasons), when I handed back their quizzes, I also handed back a copy of my key. They also caught on to the incentive nature of making corrections.

Next we went over quadratic equations. This actually went fairly well in both classes. I “reviewed” how to reduce radicals, how to factor a quadratic expression, how to use the quadratic formula, and how to factor a sum or difference of cubes. In both classes, students said, “Oh, that’s how you do that!” so I’m somewhat hopeful.

I may not have written about these lessons when I first planned to, but at least I’m caught up now. Maybe by Monday (my next B-day), I’ll have things a little better in hand.