Our math department has totally redone our curriculum. The four of us have implemented new activities, new projects, new assessments, etc. One thing that I incorporated this year was the Word Wall. I read about the Word Wall in a book by Tom DeRosa. In my geometry class, the students are required to make a math dictionary using notecards and a loose leaf ring. The students write the important terms from the lesson on the notecards. The loose leaf rings allow the students to put their notecards in alphabetical order at the end of the lesson. Every Wednesday, the students have a quiz in which they define one word from the word wall. The students are not allowed to define a term they have already defined. So far, "Word Wall Wednesday" as I call it, is going well! The Word Wall also helps add some decoration to my classroom.
I also wanted to share this Distribution Property Poster project that we used in Algebra 1. The idea came from another teacher in our mathematics department who got the idea from a former co-worker. Here are the instructions and an example. If you are wondering, those are blue and orange cylinders. Most of the students had good ideas for the posters and several of them were able to show their artistic side, which I also love to see!
I love the word wall idea...care to share the words you use and how you kep track of the word wall quizzes?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I am interested in trying the distributive property poster with my 8th graders...do you have other pictures of examples to share?
Thanks!! Love your blog!
The words that I use are just the vocabulary words from our textbook. To keep track of the quizzes, I made a sheet that had space for 6 word wall quizzes (front and back). I have a file folder for each of my students. I keep the word wall quizzes in these folder so that I can keep track of the words the students have used and also so that the students do not lose their sheet from week to week. I also keep the students test and other quizzes in the folder. I will put a link to the word wall quiz on the blog hopefully in the next couple of days.
ReplyDeleteThis was the first year that our department has done the poster. I will try and get pictures of the other teachers that did the project with their students.
Thanks for reading!
Love this! I am doing it with my fifth graders in class and they are coming up with some great stuff!
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