We played a fun game in Algebra 2 today... Trashketball!  (Much thanks to Dan Greene at The Exponential Curve for the directions!)

The kids enjoyed it and (hopefully) did some reviewing for tomorrow's quiz.  Here are the slides that I made.  Not too pretty, but I didn't feel like typing all of the radicals and such.


Trashketball 7.5   7 review
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And now I've got one made to use in Precalc tomorrow. :)

I had to do some research (via twitter, of course) on how to make a tapeball.  I'm not sure I did a good job of it, but Shauna offered to have her kids make one to send me.  Pretty cool, huh!

Comments

  1. Hey! It seems you used SmartBoard for these slides. I know radicals are a pain in the rear in Smartboard. I have started typing the questions in Word using Equation Editor and then using the Camera Capture tool from my Smartboard to capture them to the slides. I hope this helps!
    Kevin

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  2. Kevin, thanks for the advice! I think this game was one I threw together last-minute (because most everything was last-minute!) and it was just easier to write in the problems. I'll probably go back and clean it up if I use it again, and will definitely keep your tip in mind!
    Kristen

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  3. Thanks for sharing this idea. I've always struggled with coming up with a "fun" review activity with my grade 9s.

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  4. You're welcome, Michelle! We ended up playing it several times as the year ended. One thing I added was a 2-point line that they could choose to shoot from if they wanted to. Made the game a little more exciting. I have some freshmen this year, too, and I'm sure we'll be playing our fair share of trashketball!

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  5. Kristen,

    I like the activity as well but I am interested in how much time you gave for the teams to work on the problems. Did the time vary depending on the problems and how long did it take for you to do this? Thanks in advance!
    Scott

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  6. Scott -

    I started out giving the groups a set amount of time to do each problem (I actually had a timer projected on the board and had it set for 2 or 3 minutes, I think). But I hate speed games - so many of the kids do better when they take the time to think about it! So now I just make sure that all of the groups have an answer before we move on. If they're taking an insane amount of time I give them a time limit.

    As for the time it takes for me to put a game together, it totally varies. We've played several times in Algebra 1 this year where I've just made up the problems as I go. In precalc or algebra 2 I'd rather have questions prepared beforehand... whether I write them up as we go or have a powerpoint prepared.

    Hope that helps!
    Kristen

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