Day 146 & 147 - Scaling Candy Wrappers

7th Grade Core Math

For this 2-day mini-project students were given the option of working with a partner or working individually.  They also had the option of scaling their candy wrapper (their own or one provided by me) on paper or on the sidewalk using chalk.  For most groups, it took most of a full period to just draw the enlarged grid.  Those using chalk had a particularly hard time once they realized that the grid needed to be at least 5 ft x 5 ft to have adequate space inside each cell to draw.  Needless to say, there were some problems with students' ability to stay focused throughout the project.  I will do this project again, but with a slight modification.  

NOTE:  I have a deaf-ed para during second period and she LOVED scaling the Minion so much she enlarged it TWICE, both in color!  One of my students, who I have a hard time keeping engaged, took her paper home and made the beautiful Skittles drawing below.

Algebra

We spent the last two days exploring exponential functions using the Teacher Activities on Desmos.  I was happily surprised at how much fun they had with the Polygraph: Exponentials game.  I originally expected to only play for 25 minutes before moving to my Exponential Regression activity.  Instead I listened and enjoyed all of the terrific vocabulary being used throughout the room.  They have asked the last two days to play again!  These two days saw them make great strides in understanding how an exponential function behave on a coordinate grid, vocabulary, and even a bit of exponential regression (some struggled with this because it isn't as easy as linear regression).