Before I Created the Book, I Went Over Highlights of the Disclosure, Then Asked Students

Mandie,

Before I created the book, I went over highlights of the disclosure, then asked students to do their best graphing about 5 linear functions on their own. I would walk around the room to observe, then let them talk for a couple of minutes. I would then create the foldable (they already had paper on their desk as they got this with the disclosure). The directions for creating the foldable are attached to this email (section I is the only part you need for the foldable itself).

The specific foldable I was referring to with you guys is the one I had students create to review linear functions. Once the foldable was 'made', I had them complete the book like this: Front page is title and their design. When you open the book, the left side talked about slope (rate of change) and as a class we would write down everything we 'remembered about slope'. The right side had examples (finding from two points and sketches of graphs with pos/neg/0/undefined slopes).

When you turned to the next page, the left side would have the 'forms of a line' (std, pt-slope, slope-int) and the right would have a graph sketched from each of these... hope this makes sense. For example, opposite of the standard from equation was a graph created by finding the intercepts... opposite the pt-slope was a graph of the equation where we graphed the y-intercept then the slope.

The last page of the book was whatever I felt was important that may have come up during the discussion... sometimes it was lots of 'real life' examples of rates of change (55 miles per hour, 5 sticks of gum per pack, 8 dollars and hour, etc.). Sometimes it was a mini 'quick draw', sometimes we did more slope concepts and talked about domain and range...

Basically, I determined what I for sure wanted on the foldable, but then 'went with the flow' based on what came up. One year my first page was all about how to graph a point as it seemed half the class mixed up the x and y variables.

For homework, I had students 'undo' their book, then turn the paper 'inside out', then told them they could write down anything they felt would be good to have as review (order of operations, solving inequalities, etc). They did not know this, but the reward for completing the first nights assignment was that they got to use their foldable on the warm ups for the first week of school.

I hope this is helpful, especially since it is via email. Honestly, I LOVED this as a way to review linear functions along with giving them quick draws the first couple of weeks. I spent a little more time than normal on warm ups and quick draws (about 10 minutes or so), but it was definitely MUCH LESS time than if I had spent days reteaching the first two chapters out of the book. I am not sure if this email makes sense. If you would like, I can talk to you over the phone or come out to Elkridge after school on Monday. Let me know.

By the way, my classes were 65 minutes long... but I also passed out books on this day as well.

I am really looking forward to your Algebra II group this year!! Thanks for all you do! Please Call me if you would like! 518-6953

Have a great day,

Joleigh