Musings from Mrs. Galvan

I have had "make fun review game for algebra kiddos" on my to do list all week. I have a few review games in my back pocket thanks to the Mtbos ( White-board stamp gam e , Solve-crumple-toss ,  zombie grudge , speed-dating ), but I wanted something new. In usual fashion, I procrastinated. I came in this morning thinking that we would play zombie grudge or have a color war , but instead, inspired by Rockstar Math Teacher , I used Socrative . In 15 minutes, I had a worksheet transformed into a Socrative quiz. In class, they used white boards and we did the space race option which randomly teams up the students. As usual, the winning team got to raid my prize barrel. I was genuinely surprised by much fun the students had with this activity. Who knew that watching your rocket ship inch its way across the screen could be so motivating? If you want a socrative that reviews solving systems, including special cases and word problems, import with this code: SOC-14218779

I remembered last year's reflection on this lesson at 5am. I heaved a sigh, skipped a shower (tmi?), skipped making coffee and quickly made a few small improvements. Normally, I ask aloud for students' shoe size and height in inches (I am still in search of reliable questions to ask students to illustrate direct and indirect variation; please share!). This year I made it a google form. Loading... This didn't take long and was an easy way to add a bit of variety and 1:1-ness to my lesson. Around 5:30 am, I made a discovery that was a real lucky break: You can paste a table into desmos and it will plot the points! Amazing. I am sure everyone else already knew that as I am famously late to knowing things, but this really made my day. I was going for indirect variation by plotting extra curricular hours and hours of sleep. Students confessed to not sleeping because of other reasons... go figure. :) The rest of my lesson was the same as before. I have b...