Deliberate Close

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Closing the Lesson
Tracy Zager emphasized, "Close the lesson," at TMC 2016. Although my
#1TMCthing is to be a math evangelist, I am focused on CLOSING every lesson because, well, I got the message.
My goals for the first week are twofold. We do mathy things in here from day ONE and our classroom culture supports everyone's success. Fast forward to Friday, the end of the first week of school. I was introducing the idea of precision when generating definitions in Geometry. Fondly called, the "unbreakable" definition. Can one draw what you write, meet the criteria, AND not draw what you meant? Time to revise your definition then. We started with Widgets and a lesson Lisa Bajerano wrote about two years ago:

I had the students make a list of the characteristics of a Widget and then write a definition. I told them we would put all of thoughts together to build the most precise definition. My brain did a silent little leap and went to, "like when we used to play Monster with the girls." Monster went like this:

Everyone (usually four) of us started with a blank piece of paper folded from portrait direction in quarters. 

Hiding their drawing from everyone else, we each drew a head, neck and shoulders on the first quarter of our paper. We each drew the connecting lines about a quarter of an inch onto the next quarter, and then folded the first quarter back, so the next illustrator could not see what we had drawn. 


The next person adds on (again without seeing what the first person drew) the arms and torso in the second quarter and the connecting lines 1/4" into the third. 
Arms and Torso
The paper gets folded back again, so that the next illustrator cannot see what drawer 1 and 2 have drawn. The third drawer makes the waist and the legs to the knee and the 1/4' connector lines into the fourth quarter and again folds the paper back so the next person cannot see anything but the connector lines that have been drawn so far. 
Waist and To Knees (ignore yellow for now)
The fourth person finishes the drawing with by adding the rest of the leg and the feet. The paper is then handed back to the original person to admire, laugh
Okay, so waist to knee was open to interpretation. 
at, and give the creature a name. SO. MUCH. FUN!

The activity takes a full ten minutes.








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About Me
Hi there, I'm Amy! A high school math teacher, poet, crafter, athlete, and mom. This blog features both math and teaching strategies, as well as some of my favorite recipes and everyday triumphs and struggles. Thanks for stopping by, feel free to share on Twitter, Facebook, or email me if you have any questions!

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