2020 Arkansas Teach of the year, Joel Lookadoo, uses models and drawings as well as written expressions to help students add two-digit numbers. Mr. Lookadoo discusses ways to decompose, or break down, numbers to make the addition easier for students. The “Show What You Know” handout gives students a chance to practice the methods Mr. Lookadoo uses.
This animated Math Shorts video from the Utah Education Network explains the term additive inverse and provides several examples that demonstrate the concept. In the accompanying classroom activity, students create equations and solve problems that involve adding groups of negative and positive integers that sum to zero. To get the most out of this activity, students should be familiar with plotting positive and negative integers on a number line. This resource is part of the Math at the Core: Middle School Collection.
In this video lesson, students are introduced to the terms complementary, for describing two angles whose measures add to 90°, and supplementary, for describing two angles whose measures add to 180°. They practice finding an unknown angle given the measure of another angle that is complementary or supplementary. Students realize that many angles share the same vertex as other angles, so they must be precise when naming each angle (MP6) in addition to describing the relationship between pairs of angles.
Grade 7, Episode 22: Unit 7, Lesson 2 | Illustrative Math
Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale, shares her love of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. This classic series of books, first published in 1908, follows young redheaded Anne from when she is first adopted to her eventual marriage to neighbor boy Gilbert and into her adult years. It encompasses many forms of love, from familial to romantic to enduring love. Atwood explains that author Montgomery did not have a happy childhood, and so she wrote the story she wished for herself. Be sure to discuss with students the questions in The Great American Read - Post-Viewing Discussion Questions under the Materials section.
Learning Objectives
Students will:
In this video, learn how using the Pythagorean Theorem can help people solve real-world problems involving distances. In the accompanying classroom activity, students develop their problem-solving, spatial reasoning, and geometry skills by putting the Pythagorean Theorem to use. After a brief discussion about how to use the theorem to find the distance between two points on a coordinate grid, students partner up and play a game in which they generate (and then calculate the distance between) two or more points on the grid. As the game increases in complexity, students begin working in all quadrants and begin identifying multiple triangles that they can use to determine the distance between points.
Visualize a strategy for approximating the square roots of nonperfect squares through modeling. This video focuses on a ratio, the number of extra tiles over the number of tiles for the next square that will give you a fractional approximation of the square root of a number. This video was submitted through the Innovation Math Challenge, a contest open to professional and nonprofessional producers. This resource is part of the Math at the Core: Middle School collection.
The Northern Arapaho of the Wind River Indian Reservation are storytellers. In an effort to pass their culture to the next generation, the elders tell the children four traditional stories. Using clay animation, shadow puppets, painting, drawing, and performance, the children make the stories come to life.
LESSON OBJECTIVES:
Students will investigate how traditional teaching and the passing on of knowledge and wisdom are done through storytelling.
Convincing evidence that is found through research will produce a strong argumentative essay. This video provides skillful tips for using analysis to write statements that support your argument with evidence.
Students will evaluate the credibility and relevance of the evidence.
Getting to the final draft takes a keen editorial eye and skillful editing. This demonstrative video uses a highlighting strategy that will help ensure that your rough draft encompasses the important parts.
This resource provides students with the opportunity to edit a sample essay for clarity and coherence.
A strong argumentative essay starts with a clear and concise topic that you care about and can research. Get tips for forming and developing an argument that will hook your audience and set the platform for a convincing essay.
This tool will assist students in selecting and narrowing a topic.
When you are writing something for work in the marketing, sales, and services industry, one of the most important things to consider is your audience. To whom are you writing, and what information do they need? A social media employee, an interior designer, and a marketing employee at a lumber company share examples and tips. This source provides instruction and discussion with considering your audience and purpose when crafting workplace documents.
Sentence fragments can't stand alone, because they do not express a complete thought. Run-ons put two complete sentences together in one sentence without separating them.
This resource allows students to practice identifying run-on sentences, sentence fragments, and complete sentences.
Childhood is a time for laughing, learning, and playing with friends. Every day all around the world children meet and make new friends. In this online book from the International Children's Digital Library, a lonely cat lives in a car with a kitchen on the dashboard. He delights in his work cleaning the highways. When he helps someone with car trouble in a traffic jam he makes a new friend. They then enjoy creating music together with a car horn. Author and Illustrator—Thacher Hurd.
This book highlights the many important aspects of making friends and being a good friend.
See the three supplemental assets for detailed teaching activities. The asset titled, "Forever Friendship- Making Friends Story Map," most closely aligns with the Alabama Course of Study.
Students will use mathematics to determine what is required to beat world champion Usain Bolt in a 200-meter race. This video focuses on systems of equations that are visualized by completing a table of values and looking for a point of intersection in a set of line graphs.
This WPSU interactive Make Connections Game gives students practice in making mental connections between the text and things the reader already knows. These connections can include things readers have read (text-to-text), things they've seen or heard (text-to-world), and things they've done (text-to-self). The game is part of Blue Ribbon Readers, a collection of games designed to help elementary school students learn to read. This game is recommended for students in grades 2 - 5.
This resource is particularly helpful with allowing students the opportunity to practice identifying text comparisons in the 3rd grade.
This WPSU interactive The Detective's Notebook Game is designed to get students to think about what they are reading and to answer questions that require inferencing. In the game, the student has access to an amateur detective's notebook in which several clues or events have been observed. From these clues, some inferences or predictions can be made. The game is part of Blue Ribbon Readers, a collection of games designed to help elementary school students learn to read. This game is best for students in grades 3 - 6)
This resource allows students the opportunity to practice drawing conclusions based on text evidence.
The Questioning Cube Game is part of WPSU’s Blue Ribbon Readers, a collection of seven interactive games designed to help elementary school students gain reading comprehension competencies. In the game, students practice asking questions about short stories or passages of expository prose. The practice of generating and answering their own questions before, during, and after reading, helps students actively create solid mental connections.
This resource allows students to answer questions about a text that has been read aloud using the 5 W's strategy.
2020 Arkansas Teacher of the Year, Joel Lookadoo, needs your help adding blocks. Can you help him find his total? The worksheet that accompanies this video provides students the opportunity to practice using manipulatives (or drawn representations of them) to solve addition and subtraction word problems.
Earlier in this video series, students reasoned about visual patterns using different representations and wrote expressions to describe the patterns. In this lesson, they continue to work with patterns but begin to see these relationships as quadratic functions and write equations to define them.
This is the first of several video lessons in which students construct quadratic functions to represent various situations. Here they investigate the movement of free-falling objects. Students analyze the vertical distances that falling objects travel over time and see that they can be described by quadratic functions. They use tables, graphs, and equations to represent and make sense of the functions. In subsequent lessons, students build on the functions developed here to represent projectile motions, providing a context to develop an understanding of the zeros, vertex, and domain of quadratic functions.
To express the relationship between distance and time, students need to see regularity in numerical values and express that regularity (MP8).
Previously in this video series, students used simple quadratic functions to describe how an object falls over time given the effect of gravity. In this video lesson, they build on that understanding and construct quadratic functions to represent projectile motions. Along the way, they learn about the zeros of a function and the vertex of a graph. They also begin to consider appropriate domains for a function given the situation it represents.
Students use a linear model to describe the height of an object that is launched directly upward at a constant speed. Because of the influence of gravity, however, the object will not continue to travel at a constant rate (eventually it will stop going higher and will start falling), so the model will have to be adjusted (MP4). They notice that this phenomenon can be represented with a quadratic function and that adding a squared term to the linear term seems to “bend” the graph and change its direction.
Students learn to figure out elapsed time by counting, subtracting, and regrouping in base 60. This activity is motivated by a Cyberchase episode in which Digit and Hacker compete in a cooking contest.
Pi can be calculated using a random sample of darts thrown at a square and circle target. The problem with this method lies in attempting to throw "randomly." We explored different ways to overcome our errors.
Learn how algebra can quickly determine the point where two lines intersect. This video focuses on setting linear equations equal to each other to find a common solution.
This video was submitted through the Innovation Math Challenge, a contest open to professional and nonprofessional producers and is part of the Math at the Core: Middle School collection.
Estimate the volume you get when you fill 3D shapes with candy. This video focuses on estimating volume using nonstandard units, using the volume equation to get a more reliable estimate, and checking your estimate by counting the nonstandard units.
2020 Arkansas Teacher of the Year, Joel Lookadoo, needs your help to divide pizza and candy equally among a group of friends! Join in for a lesson on creating equal shares. The worksheet that accompanies this video provides students with the opportunity to practice creating equal shares on their own.
In this video lesson, students will learn how to add signed numbers to build fluency. They see that adding a number and its opposite gives a sum of 0. They contrast adding numbers with the same sign with numbers with different signs. In addition, the students will learn that using the structure of opposites on the number line, they see that when adding two numbers with different signs, the sign of the sum will match the sign of the addend with a greater magnitude. Students are also introduced to using negative numbers in the context of money to represent debts or debits.
Using a mathematical structure (the signed numbers) to represent a context (a checking account balance) is an example of modeling with mathematics.
In this interactive lesson supporting literacy skills, students examine what Anne Frank’s writing and a video dramatization of her diary reveal about her character and how it changed while she was in hiding. Students develop their literacy skills as they explore an English language arts focus on character change. During this process, they read informational text, learn and practice vocabulary words, and explore content through videos and interactive activities.
This resource also includes two informative essay prompts to which students can respond. Be sure to look at the Support Materails for additiaonl resources.
Students complete a chart describing Duke Ellington’s motivations for playing the piano and describe how these motivations changed his attitude toward playing the piano.
This resource provides students with an opportunity to analyze character motivation.
This video from American Masters: Harper Lee: Hey, Boo highlights Scout, one of the most beloved characters in all of the American fiction and the main character of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. In the video, students learn what makes Scout unique as well as what makes her a “typical American character.” This resource provides instruction and discussion surrounding characterization. Students are prompted to provide text evidence to support their reasoning.
2018 Arkansas Teacher of the Year, Randi House, discusses how authors reveal personality and physical traits to help us learn more about the characters in stories. Ms. House shares an example of how she might be described if she were the character in a story and encourages students to think about words that might be used to describe themselves. The worksheet that accompanies this video provides a space for students to describe a character’s thoughts, speech, attitude, and actions, as well as a place for students to illustrate the character’s physical appearance. This worksheet can be used in conjunction with any novel or short story.
Exhibit your knowledge of 2D shapes and search for similar characteristics. This interactive diagram focuses on sorting polygons by common properties and then you select the correct label for each section of the Venn Diagram.
In this video, examine strategies to identify the properties of quadrilaterals—specifically, parallelograms. Students will compare and contrast squares, rectangles, and rhombuses, which are all parallelograms. In the accompanying classroom activity, students create posters identifying the properties of various quadrilaterals. They explore how these shapes compare and contrast and then analyze the ways that parallelograms distinguish themselves from other quadrilaterals.
After this video lesson from Classroom Connection, students will know the difference between a trapezoid and a parallelogram, and be able to answer the question, “Are you a square?”
Comparing fractions is easy when the numerators or denominators are the same, but what about when they’re different? Use this lesson from Classroom Connection to master comparing fractions, no matter what numbers they have.
