Trying Bingo + Open Middle for the win
Okay, so there is nothing new about Bingo, BUT somehow I have never incorporated it into my class! As part of my efforts to add more fun to everyday class (Super Bowl prediction sheets, Math Valentines, Pies on Pi day, March Math Madness) I decided to create a Bingo sheet for my students to play on PI day as a way for students to win some pie! I got the idea from a fellow teacher at my school last week on our professional development day. She uses Bingo all the time and she says the kids love it - plus it helps them practice their vocabulary.
I couldn’t believe it but I had trouble finding a basic Bingo sheet online without having to pay for one on Teachers Pay Teachers. I created my own sheet quick (HERE) and included vocabulary from the entire year. I handed out the Bingo sheets to students yesterday and told them to fill it out sometime before Pi day so they would be ready to go.
Tomorrow, my plan is to do 3 rounds of Bingo in each class, and the winner each round will get to choose a Pie (blueberry, apple, or peach). HERE is the definition sheet I made - I printed this out on cardstock, cut it into 24 little squares, and put them in an empty can. I’ll pull them from this can and read ONLY the definition out loud.
I’ll write about this later this week, but I got a donation of 120 pies from a local company called Table Talk Pies. Every year, local STEM groups can fill out a pie donation request form specifically for Pi day. I had never known about this amazing opportunity until this year, when I took a chance and emailed the company asking about bulk orders and group discounts. I was so happy to discover I could request a bulk order at no cost! I just picked them up today and cannot wait to bring them in to share with my math team and students. Thank you Table Talk Pies!
If you teach math and haven’t heard of Open Middle yet, you need to go HERE immediately and explore their website. It was created by Robert Kaplinsky and has grown so much over the past decade.
We’re in the middle of our Polynomial unit in Algebra II. As is the case in pretty much every math class ever, I have some students who finish their work quickly, and even after having them help their group or neighbor, they still start looking around for something to do. I hate wasting time and I hate seeing my students waste their time, so I always try to have more problems ready. Open Middle is a great way to create extra open-ended, more critical thinking problems for students who need the challenge. They have numerous tasks/problems for each topic within each grade, and for every problem, there is a hint and full solution provided.
I made THIS worksheet for students who finished their ‘graphing cubic functions with synthetic division’ work early. In one of my classes in particular, they got really into it and gathered around a table to discuss and debate their way through the problems.