Last week I decided to try something new - mapping. I always thought this was a waste of time and never attempted it in my classes before. But once again, I am here eating my words.
I started by giving each student a piece of paper and asked them to create a map about themselves. I went in this direction because we have never completed a mapping before, I wanted to have a nice, easy entry point. Students (people) love to talk about themselves.
After about 5 minutes, I instructed them to turn their papers over and now create a mapping of the equation 3x + 4y = 16. I gave them 5 minutes to work on this.
Some students sat their motionless, so I prompted them to write anything about the equation, even if it was obvious.
Next, I grouped the students into 2-3 and gave them a large whiteboard and markers and asked them to create one together. Below are the results:
We went over each board together as a whole class. Something that disappointed me was that one group of three wrote that the slope of the line was 3x. No one in that groups questioned it! No one! Sigh. We corrected that misconception, and let's hope it doesn't rear it's ugly head again. If you look close enough at each of the whiteboards, you will see little mistakes. These errors make for great classroom discussions. Something I would not have had the opportunity to do if I didn't do this "fluffy" activity.
I do this and call it a web. Works well for graphing things like a quadratic in standard or vertex form - tell me everything you know about it.
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