Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Reviewing with Desmos and a Twist

 In these Covid times, we are in school learning in hybrid. My students sit in rows and we don't do anything that involves moving around the room, working in groups, or using all my manipulatives.  This makes it a little challenging to use my fun review games.  

We are getting ready to take a quiz on Quadratics in Algebra 2, so I made a 10 question Desmos activity.  I am not versed enough in the computation layer to make it self checking (yet), so I did not include answers or make it self checking (but that would make keeping track of the game much easier).  I wanted to make it a game to add a little bit of competition and make them motivated to work and ask questions.  I don't like games that add a speed element because it adds too much stress to the students.  I divided my students into teams based on their rows with about 4 kids per team.  Once I saw that each person on the team had a correct answer in desmos, they earned a card - a regular playing card (mine are bigger size though).  I put the card on the board face backwards so they can't see the value.  I had the value for 2-10 as the face value.  I made Jack, Queen, and Kings all 10 points each and the Ace is 11 points.  

They had me running about all class.  I was checking their work and answering great questions. I felt like I was on the Price is Right.  In fact, it was the most they have spoken or asked questions all year.  Just that little added layer of "winning a card".  As the period drew to its end, I flipped over the cards and we totaled them up.  Highest hand won.  It was a lot of fun.  I learned about a lot of common misconceptions.  So many kids are still squaring a negative b and getting a negative in the quadratic formula even though I tell them to include the parentheses every day.  

They learned and I learned, it was a quick and easy fix to make it a game.

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