Saturday, August 22, 2020

Collaborative Group Work with Add-Em Up

In my research for methods to get students working on the concepts we were learning, I found this blog post by Sara Van Der Werf where she described the review activity she called "Add-Em up." In Precalculus we were working on solving exponential equations. These have numerical answers, which works for add-em up. I made two sets of cards with 8 questions each using questions from our curriculum's notes and homework. One set was printed on red paper and the other set was on green paper. 

Since my classroom is a lab room, I have black lab tables for desks which we often write on with chalk markers. I went to each group and wrote the number they were hoping to add up to in the color that matched the set of cards they were working on. Students worked on the problems with chalk markers on the tables. Even upper class men enjoy writing on desks! 

One of our administrators came in during the class and took some pictures, so I have some to share. One direction that I didn't think to give out was not to erase their work before they were finished adding all of the answers. One group had done some erasing for more room, but then had a harder time finding their mistake when the numbers didn't add up. I also wanted to make sure to see their work and thinking before they did any erasing.  

I used this add-em up activity in other units as well, but with even less prep. I just told students what questions from notes or homework I wanted them to work on and gave them the total they were supposed to add up to. 

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