MPM1D1 - Day 2 Integer Solitaire & Corner to Corner

Today we started with Integer Solitaire. The idea is that students work in pairs (I know, it's not very solitary but it allows me to hear the thinking that's going on). As a pair they draw 18 cards from a deck of cards and try to use fourteen of them to fill in the grid below so that each equation is true. The black cards are positive and the red cards are negative.

Some groups struggled with getting starting but once they got going most were doing great. The nice thing about this activity is that there's a ton of trial and error, which means a ton of practice with adding and subtracting integers.

At one point I overheard "A negative and a negative make a positive." This seemed like a good time to discuss what adding a negative and subtracting a negative would mean. The student who made the comment realized his error as soon as I stopped the class but I thought others would benefit from the conversation so we continued on. Some groups were quicker than others so they got to play again.

After a bit of practice we moved on to Corner to Corner. We watched the video and I asked what they noticed and what they wondered. There was a good response for the noticing. Not so much for the wondering. We'll work on it.

When I start with problem solving I like to use a problem solving framework. I really like Robert Kaplinsky's layout so I handed it out and we started filling it in together.We'll do it together the first couple of times, then they can do it on their own and eventually, hopefully, they won't need the framework anymore.  Once they had all the information they needed  I put them into random groups of 3 and sent them to the board to work.

It was interesting to watch. We aren't working on any particular unit now so I saw some interesting approaches. Some groups calculated volume, others talked about finding surface area. I asked a few questions about whether volume or surface area would be helpful. I asked them to remind me what they were looking for then let them try to sort things out.

 Some groups recognized that there were right triangles involved and made reference to the Pythagorean Theorem. I heard "I don't remember the Py...whatever theorem."

We were quickly running out of time so I handed out a page with some homework questions for adding and subtracting integers and the bell went.

Tomorrow we'll get back in our groups and continue trying to find the length of the string.