Integers!

Hello Everyone!

This week was a pretty fun one in math! I haven't covered the concept of integers in a long time, but somehow, I have managed to retain a bit of knowledge regarding them. It was very exciting for me to be able to quickly figure out the problems and activities, as this rarely happened in any of my high school math classes. So with that, here's a bit of what we covered last week!

The first thing that happened in class was the integer assignment presentation. This presentation was very informative, and a bit of a refresher to those of us who have not worked with integers for a while. This presentation kick started us into our next activity: Integer Football.

Before this class, I had heard about Integer Football, but had never had the chance to play it. In this game, our table groups were split up into teams and given a number line, a die, and a penny. The goal of the game was to make it to the other team's "end zone". When a team rolled the die, that indicated how many spaces they would move. When a team flipped the coin, it told them what direction they would move. (E.g. Heads positive and to the right, Tails negative and to the left). At the beginning of our game, both teams ended up moving in opposite directions, and therefore, scored no points. I think this game is a great introduction to integers, and includes participation from everyone involved! I also liked this game because we learned new things without even realizing it! I believe that in making concepts and ideas relatable, students will learn and remember them so much better than if it were just placed on the whiteboard.

Dunn, Erin. "Integer Football".

The next game that we played was the spinner game. In this game, players had to combine a series of positive and negative integers to create one whole number. To play the game, a player would roll the die, which coincided with how many integers they were able to use to create the whole number, and spin the spinner, which decided what whole number they players would create. I liked this game because it allowed all players to work on and refine their mental math skills together! I think that this is also a great game to use in the classroom, as it promotes teamwork to solve a problem!

Dunn, Erin. "The Spinner Game".

The penultimate activity in this week's lesson was to work on integer word problems, involving Mount Everest, as a group. I'm not going to lie, this made me a bit nervous, as I had to write down my own answer before collaborating as a group. This made me even more nervous as I compared my answer to the other member's answer, and mine was the only one that was different. We all had alternate ways of processing the question, and after much discussion, somehow my answer turned out to be the correct one. I mean, I was hoping it would be, since I was able to explain how I arrived at it, but I was discouraged when I saw the other answers. The lesson learned from this problem is be confident in your answers (and in yourself!), because you may be right! (regardless of what the other answers are).

Dunn, Erin. "Mount Everest Question".

We ended this week's lesson by placing a number line in our interactive notebooks; something that I hope to use in my own future classroom! This is a great visual aid for all students, as it helps them to count and see the integers that they are adding and subtracting.

I enjoyed this lesson immensely, and hope to use these games and activities to spark collaboration, understanding, and confidence in my students!

Until next week, Happy Math-ing!