Yo, Radical Mistakes Dude!

In Accelerated Algebra 2, we are working on radicals - simplifying and writing in exponential form.  I taught two classes and ended the second class with an exit ticket my colleague made.  I told the students they would be collected and corrected but not graded (to use them as formative assessment).  When I started to look at them, I was amazed at all the different mistakes I was seeing, so I decided to turn it into an opener for the following class (today).  I took pictures of the mistakes and put them into a powerpoint.  There were 6 questions and I have 6 groups of students, so I invited one group at a time to go over the slide with the mistakes.  I let them study it first to see if they could make sense of it, then I asked them to talk out loud about what they saw.  The students in the audience were all ready to chime in, but I wanted the students at the board to discuss it.  I tried to gently guide them with questions like what did the person do?  Is the first step correct?  Why did they do that?  What should they have done?  It really led to some great conversations and I hope the thought process helps clarify it for them for the future.

One that killed me was this:
 


Here is my powerpoint of Radical Mistakes.  Feel free to use.

Yo, Radical Mistakes Dude!