I’ve neglected to blog for a bit because I have been consumed with creating Illustrative Math resources that support student learning in our Title I after school math program.
It has been quite a challenge adapting and modifying our old resource to match IM’s deep conceptual understanding and lesson progression. Revising after school lessons that model and reinforce IM’s approach to learning isn’t easy. In many cases I’ve had to start from scratch.
Two activities worth sharing are modifications I made to seventh grade Unit 4 Proportional Relationships and Percentages.
Students in the after school program benefit from visual models so I wanted to add tape diagrams to the Unit 4 Lessons 4 and 5 card sorts. Since the 7th grade teachers were using IM’s card sorts in class, I needed to created new situations, equations, and tables along with the tape diagrams. I combined IM’s two card sorts since the students already received instruction on Lesson 5.
Below is an example of IM’s card sort.
Here’s my modification.
Adding the tape diagrams really allowed our striving students to better connect the situation with the equation and table.
The strategy was so successful I used it to reteach IM’s Lesson 6 Increasing and Decreasing. Students were given this handout (key included) and collaborated on completing the tape diagram, finding the percent increase or decrease, and creating the equation.
Feel free to use these two activities and let me know if they are helpful.
Curiouser and Curiouser 