I really ham up the story and have even been known to bring props like ski clothes and other ski paraphanelia. One of my characters is “Slope Dude.” I love to tell the kids the story of slope dude, a not so bright guy who goes skiing and learns about math in the process. ![]() I was presenting at our state’s math conference and was telling the audience about how I often use stories or skits to introduce new math topics. Hi, I read your blog and I have to tell you the story of the cheesy Slope Dude Video. I really love the online PLN! Thanks Slope Dude! : ) It also defined the word “undefined” a “cuss word” in mathematics, which really entertained my 6th graders (hopefully enough so that they will actually remember it long term)! It is actually so catchy that I now say, “Puff, puff positive” and “Nice negative” every day. It is cheesy and fun – just up my math video alley. I believe that adding the equation to each slide will fill in this gap.Īfter my slope lesson I introduced my students to my best slope discovery of all – a fantastic “Slope Dude” video that I found on Teacher Tube. While most students did get the connection between the graph of a negative slope and -M in the equation, I need to be more explicit to increase comprehension for all of my students. Next year I need to add more positive and negative slopes with the corresponding equations. I then presented them with animated skiers going up, down, and off of the sides of mountains! I love using Powerpoint, as I can make it much more fun than my usual little stick guy falling off an undefined slope drawn on the whiteboard. Some kids were disappointed that we decided not to use their more creative names, but most students were very happy with good old “Slope”. Instantly, many kids said, “Slope!” like they had discovered it all by themselves. Since I’m a Powerpoint fan now, I made a Powerpoint full of ski slopes and put a big ski slope on the screen just as I finished this talk. BUT, I told them that we would have to give M not only an interesting name, but also a descriptive name so that M would not easily be forgotten. As a 6th grade teacher, at this point I had kids yell out crazy random names. I told them that M was a pretty pathetic name, and that we needed to come up with a better name for M. We talked again about how M determined the steepness of the line and which direction the line went. ![]() The students got out their graphing worksheets to review. I picked where I left off in the previous lesson, and had a “reminder” discussion about M. ![]() When you think slopes, think about skiing!.Read a graph from left to right, just like you read a book.There are two things that I focus on when teaching slope: This year, I added some Powerpoint visuals and a very fun Teacher Tube video to spice up my lesson. I always use the ski analogy to teach students slope.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |