Go with your gut...and what your girlfriend says

Today turned out to be a great day. I did the activity I told you about in periods 1 and 3. I think I pulled it off. I could of however, modeled it before I let them start. In other words, I should have done an example of how I wanted them to solve the problems and sort out the steps. Tomorrow, I will try doing that for 8th period. However, I'm afraid they won't have enough time to complete the activity. We run a little tight on time in both periods today. So much so, 1st period worked on the activity until the bell rang.

While I was brainstorming how to execute the activity with my girlfriend over the weekend, she pointed out that I did not indicate the original problems. In my gut, I agreed with her, but my original plan was to challenge the students and have them pick out the problems and work from there, OR, pick out the solutions and work backwards. After talking to her about it, I decied to give them some time to figure it out on their own and then give them the original problems.

In 1st period, they did say that it was too hard, so I gave them the problems about half way through. Most of the groups finished about half. For 3rd, I gave them the problems at the beginning. All they had to do then was find those problems in the pile and sort out the rest of the steps from there. That turned out to be a little better since most of the groups actually finished or came close. The point is, in both classes, they were working hard to figure out these problems and review for the test.