Algebra Party!!

We are moving at a snail's pace in Honors Geometry this year... New 8 period, shorter class, day (up from 7), new textbook & curriculum, and ever changing daily schedules have made it hard to find my grove to get through material!  That being said, we are working on solving problems involving segments and angles using algebra.  I didn't want this week to just be a boring week where I show lots of examples in class and students do lots of examples for homework, so I decided to throw a big ole Algebra Party.

It all started with some angle bisector algebra problems.  I used a carousel approach where I gave each group of 4 students 4 different problems and a big whiteboard.  There were 4 steps to each problem:  Draw and label a picture, write an equation, solve the equation, and solve for the requested segment.  Each student did step 1 for their own problem, then rotated to the next problem to check and do step 2, etc. until all four problems were complete.  The students said that it really helped them to understand the different types of problems better.

Then we had a half day with 15 minute classes on Friday.  To ramp up the excitement for a week of lots of Algebra, I decided to have the students make party hats.  They are really very simple hats, but they loved it!  Our school motto this year is "212 it - go the extra degree" and one student made a 212 hat:  It says:  STEAMY MATH 44,944 / 212 = 212 

The second party game was clock partners.  I had the students sign up for partners for each hour of the clock and just called out random hours for three problems.  They got to work with different partners and do some problems with vertical and supplementary angles. 

To conclude the week of party games I will be doing two more party games.  The first will be another carousel activity, but randomly assigning students to groups to practice complementary and supplementary angles.  The second will be a scavenger hunt with acute and obtuse inequalities.  

Who said math class had to be boring?