The month of May can be a really hard time to be a student; not only are you counting down the days but so are the adults--though, in my experience, not in the same way as the students. At the end of the school year I start to get a bit panicky about "covering" all the standards for the course. This puts some strain on my beliefs that going slower is in fact going faster. My knee-jerk reaction is to want to lecture every day for the last 4 weeks of school. I have to take deep breathes and remind myself that letting students explore and get out of their seats means much more in the long run to both student retention and understanding than just another day of talking at them.
So, in Algebra 1 we took an entire day in May and reviewed proportions (based on this beautiful nugget from Jonathon Claydon). We measured objects around the school that were too tall to be measured otherwise: walls, flagpoles, ceilings, etc. We did this by comparing our 'real height' with our 'fake height'. Think of any proportions problem from middle school and you're half-way there.
So, in Algebra 1 we took an entire day in May and reviewed proportions (based on this beautiful nugget from Jonathon Claydon). We measured objects around the school that were too tall to be measured otherwise: walls, flagpoles, ceilings, etc. We did this by comparing our 'real height' with our 'fake height'. Think of any proportions problem from middle school and you're half-way there.
We start out by measuring our 'real heights'. Then we go out and measure our heights next to an object. This is our 'fake height'. For example, say a student is standing next to a wall, depending on where his or her parter is standing, say on the meter stick the student's 'fake height' is 3.5 cm and the wall's 'fake height' is 12 cm. But, since we know the student's 'real height', we can set up a proportion to find the wall's 'real height'.
'Real world' without being trite AND it gets students out of their seats--I can't ask for much more than that in a single lesson.
'Real world' without being trite AND it gets students out of their seats--I can't ask for much more than that in a single lesson.
| Here's the handout I use: | 
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