Students spend their whole lives working with positive numbers. Then one day we’re like, “Hey, guess what guys? Some numbers are negative. Surprise!” We then wonder why they have such a hard time acclimatizing to this newfound knowledge. How can we break this sad cycle? I find that for many students, if you want them to really understand what they’re doing with adding positive and negative integers, you have to do a lot of background building and even some unteaching from what they’re used to. [Read more…] about How to Make Adding Integers Stick Forever
I Can Statements
Using I Can Statements in a Math Interactive Notebook
When Common Core became the standards a few years ago I was also introduced to I Can statements. I was taking some graduate classes at that time for instructional design and we were learning about lesson objectives. The common wisdom is that lesson objectives should have what students would be able to do at the end of the lesson and be measurable. Then, I heard about I Can statements. What struck me as important was how they were written from the point of view of the student. This was very intriguing to me, but I didn’t know what to do with it.
[Read more…] about Using I Can Statements in a Math Interactive Notebook
Teaching Scale Drawings with I Can Statements
Scale drawings are a relatively fun topic to teach. Students grasp this concept more easily than some because it is very visual. Today I’m going to share with you how I teach scale drawings using “I Can” statements as my guide. [Read more…] about Teaching Scale Drawings with I Can Statements
