Vocab, Vocab, Vocab.

Trying to blog more frequently, and be less rambly while doing so.  Yay!

Lately, the three teachers that teach geometry in my department have been running into a problem with students getting lost in the vocabulary, theorems, postulates, and terms of geometry as of late.  On our quizzes, that's been the area where students have been losing the most points.  As the geometry fundamentals teacher (support guy), I wanted to try to find a way to help reinforce these ideas for our students, but in a little different way.

This led me to Attempt #1:  Term Puzzle



This is a puzzle that I have seen our Accelerated Algebra 2 and Pre-calculus teacher use for review in class.  In fact, it actually came from our Spanish teacher and he had written a little Flash program to create them for his students.  I ended up creating mine in SMART Notebook, and it worked just as easily (maybe moreso due to the equations and math notation needed).

I printed the sheet onto card stock, cut up the squares, and placed them into snack size baggies.  I paired the students up using playing cards, and handed them a baggie.  Their job was to match the term to its description, and complete the entire 4x4 grid.  I put some "unmatchable" terms on the corner pieces so as to not totally give away the corners.  It took about 10-15 minutes for the quickest students to complete, and about 30-35 minutes for the slowest.

Attempt #2:  Memory Tournament



With this, I took the same 24 pairs of terms/descriptions as I used in the puzzle, but then made 48 squares in SMART Notebook.  Each item got its own square.  Once again, I will cut into squares, put in baggies, and pair up kids.  This time, it's TOURNAMENT STYLE!

Students are paired up, and will match terms to their descriptions.  While they are playing (for the first 2 rounds), I will have the correct pairings projected on the screen, so they can check to see if they have a correct pair.  I feel that they are still thinking of what the correct pairing is, and this is just a way for them to self-check their work.  Starting with Round 3, the "key" will disappear as they will have already seen it twice.

I do realize that I should have gone with an odd number of pairings, and that can be left up to the teacher.  Just remove 1, 3, or 5 pairs to get an odd pairing and eliminate the possibility of ties.  Switch them out with other pairings in later rounds...whatever.  Have fun with it.

On page three of the attached file, you will see my SMARTBoard tournament grid.  I enter names into the brackets and Infinite Clone them to advance them in the tournament.  There is also another blank grid on another page of the Notebook file for the consolation bracket.

I'm in probably the most "creative" stretch of my teaching career right now due to us starting block scheduling, and even moreso, the Math Twitter Blogosphere of AWESOMENESS!!

Thank you to all of you out there doing amazing things in your classroom, inspiring students, and inspiring teachers!!