Saturday, August 11, 2012

A "Duh" Moment

I don't know about you, but every so often, I have a thought (well, technically I have thoughts more often than that...) that just hits me upside the head with its simplicity. This is one of those times...

Back in June, I posted about using Interactive Notebooks in my classes this year. Well, June (and July) came and went and I really didn't do anything more about it. I attend @mgolding's wonderful INB talk at Twitter Math Camp and then again last week at the Global Math Department meeting, but I've not really sat down and put pencil to paper and how I planned to use these things.

In Algebra 2 at my school, we don't start with review material. We start with Parent Functions, transformations of parent functions, and review linear equations as it comes up. In fact, you may recall this picture from my June INB blog post:


At last Tuesday's Global Math Department Meeting, @mgolding announces that this week's meeting will be about foldables and @jreulbach will be giving an encore performance of her Twitter Math Camp presentation this coming Tuesday. (YAY!)

So all of these thoughts are swirling around in my head and during Wednesday afternoon's naptime, I have the thought... HEY! That table can be a foldable!!


I took the table AS-IS, cut around it, folded it in half, cut the flaps, and labeled it. Now kids can "quiz" themselves one function at a time..


Seriously - it was that easy! Makes me wonder what else I've used that had easy foldable potential that I've ignored!

UGH! *Smack!*

So Simple, yet I'd never thought of it before... *sigh*

7 comments:

Sarah Carter (@mathequalslove) said...

Love it!

I wish I could skip review at the beginning but our Alg 1 scores were so low that I think my students will need as much review as possible at the beginning of the year.

Christy said...

Love, love, LOVE IT!!! We cover transformations as well in the beginning. Will totally steal this!! YAY!!

Unknown said...

Don't you just love the aha moments! They aren't just for students!

Anonymous said...

Once you start doing foldables, you start obsessing about breaking your lessons down into three to six separate-but-equal sections so you can put them into a foldable.

A foldable pattern that I like a lot (and probably overuse) is the shutter fold. For example, for a four-tab shutter fold, fold the paper hotdog, then hamburger, then fold the edges to the middle. Cut the fold lines on the shutters to form the four tabs.

Here are examples from my Geometry class. It's a sickness.

Kathryn Laster said...

Better late than never! I LOVE the foldable, even if it is a "DUH" moment. :)

Unknown said...

Lol!

Amy Gruen said...

Nice foldable! What I really like about this post is that you are starting the year with parent functions for Algebra 2. I have been thinking of doing that for a while now, but I haven't seen anyone else taking that approach. Thanks for confirming that I am not crazy to think that is a logical place to start. Have a great year!