New Year, New View...

With this new year, I am transitioning into a new position as a Special Education Teacher for 7th Grade. This blog will continue to serve as a resource for Middle School Math help in various areas and since I will be teaching in an online atmosphere, it will be here to benefit the students I will be servicing as well as those around the world.

If you are interested in my personal teaching blog, please feel free to subscribe to Live.Teach.Create as that will be regularly updated with new materials, creations, reflections and more while 4mulaFun will continue to be for resources as questions arise in our classrooms.

Indirect Measurement and "Corny" Proportions

 Friday we wrapped up our unit on Similar Figures by working on Indirect Measurement. First thing we did was fill out our mini book Flippable with an example of Indirect Measurement of a Truffala tree from the Lorax) and Max (from Where the Wild Things Are).   We discussed how to determine the height of something if knew the height and shadow length of another thing as well as the shadow of the figure.

After we did that together, we moved on to filling our jar on the different ways that we could use indirect measurements and came up with some great ideas. After that, the students then had to solve word problem about basketball courts.  All students who worked through the word problem and solved it correctly earned a sticker toward a Homework Pass!

Today was a review day since we have a quiz over our unit on Proportions tomorrow. As a review, each student had to come up with their own "Corny" Proportion. It had to be about them and include Candy!

After seeing my example of a proportional candy word problem, they got busy writing. Then after each student wrote their problem, they had to have it approved. Once approved, they went back to solve and decorate. Now, they got a bit of "inspiration" during this time as I passed around some Candy Corn to each student. What a fun way to finish up our unit on proportions.

I honestly can't wait to snap pics of the proportions tomorrow and Wednesday as my students are taking their Proportions Quiz. I know they are more than ready for this quiz and will do amazing!

Don't forget, Extra Credit is due on Wednesday by 4pm to receive a test grade replaced. 

Also, this week's homework is a review from the first six weeks for all my classes.

Making Similar Figures

This week we extended our unit on Proportionality to cover Similar Figures. On Tuesday/Wednesday we made a 3 page Mini Book covering all the various parts of Similar Figures. We also learned that NEW word that I've been teasing about.... SCALE FACTOR! (Remember, if someone emails me by Friday afternoon telling me something you taught them about scale factor, you will earn 3 stickers!)

The outside of our book contained our title as well as our "I Can" statement of what we would be able to do once we had mastered the knowledge behind Similar Figures.  

When you open up the first flap, we began to discuss the definition of similar figures. We then drew examples and came up with the characteristics of similar figures showed us that both shapes can be similar if they are of different dimensions.
To explore that further we went on to create two models of similar figures that we were able to count and test the difference. Then we added in that to be similar BOTH DIMENSIONS must change!  

But how do we know that we are right? We can check it using Ratios! So we created our ratios of our two new quadrilaterals and compared them using cross products. Okay, we have that down pat! Now let's bring in that new word, SCALE FACTOR! Yep, makes life so much easier if we are able to multiply our denominators and numerators by a number (the scale factor) to determine equivalent ratios!
Next up, it was time to try it out! Each group got a baggie of centimeter cubes and went to town creating some amazing models! Check them out below!

If you are a teacher looking for the resources used in this lesson, please check out my TpT Store and my Teacher Blog.

Extra Credit (7th Grade Math)

Late extra credit will NOT be accepted. Time in class will not be given for this project. You must work on your own to create an interactive review game covering the concepts that we have learned or create a video that teaches the material that you have learned (enough that someone who knows nothing about the concept could easily learn).

Questions may be answered in tutorial times only, not in class.

Ratios and Proportions Introduction

We have hit the ground running with our Proportionality Unit! I am so amazed by how well the class is taking to this unit as they have learned HOW IMPORTANT ratios are in the real world and how often we use them. Loved hearing today that they remembered using them in Science just a few weeks ago in a lab! How awesome they are seeing connections cross-curricular!

Day 1: All About Ratios, Simplifying Ratios and Comparing Ratios- pg. 40 in the INB

Day 2- Rates and Unit Rates- pg. 41 in the INB

Day 3- What are Proportions?- pg 42 in the INB

Day 4- Writing Proportions- pg 43 in the INB

Day 5- Solving Proportions from Word Problems- pg. 44 in the INB

All of this has provided some AMAZING conversation in class. We have started going into similar figures now to go along with our proportions and will be doing that the rest of this week. I will post more about that tomorrow.

The extra credit that I will be offering this six weeks involves ratios, proportions and similar figures. I will post the official information on it tomorrow but I will let you know, you will become the teacher and be creative in your project through one of two forms. Be on the lookout for more info.

Side Note: If you are a teacher reading this blog and are interested in the lessons above for Day 1-3, check out the All About Ratios Bundle in my TpT store! The Proportions Bundle will be coming soon as it has been revised from what is currently in my store that I taught with 8th graders. I will also have the entire unit available once completed.

These lessons can now be found in their updated form in my 6th Grade Ratios and Proportional Relationships bundle in my TpT Store as well as in my 6th Grade All Standards bundle.

Ratios and Central Tendency Homework

Dividing Decimals Review

Today I reviewed with 8th period how to divide with Decimals and we created a short but sweet video. Enjoy! :)