Round 2

I had such high goals for my blogging self last year and very little success. Unexpected challenges came up and my goals had to change.  I always tell my sixth graders it's important to be flexible, so it was a good reminder for myself.   THIS YEAR will be different.  I received an email from Julie Reulbach, whose blog I have been following this past year ( ispeakmath.wordpress.com ).  It was an invitation for posts in the MS Sunday Funday on icebreakers.  I got this request amid all of the posts from TMC13 recap posts and I was once again motivated.  Thank you Julie for taking the time for the email and invitation to join this group.

Onto my icebreaker. I remember my first days of school as a student- sitting in desks doing very little talking and hearing about all the rules and expectations.  Well... the teachers were talking, but I probably missed most of what they were saying because I was the student who would rather be "doing."  My activity for my 6th grade math classes this year will be a data collection activity.  The link has a sample of questions geared toward adults, but I will throw in more that relate to middle schoolers.  You cut out the questions and tape one on each student's back with the idea that no one will tell them what the question is on their back.  Each student receives a data collection sheet and walks around the room recording the answers that everyone gives them.  They must also answer the questions that the other students have taped to their backs.  When all the answers are recorded, the students need to come up with two possible questions that would make sense of the data they collected.

I'm excited about this activity for a number of reasons:
*  The students will be up, moving around and talking to everyone else in the room.
*  I'll get an idea of the class's ability to estimate and their number sense based on some of the answers.
*  I will have 26 (or however many students I have in the class) sets of data that I can use throughout the year.  I plan on collecting the sheets and using them to make graphs, look for patterns and find measures of central tendencies.

Will I learn a lot about the students from this activity?  Probably not, that is why they will have a "Getting to Know You" survey as their homework for the first night.  Will the students get to know me?  I hoping they will get a taste of what math class will be like this year- we'll  be getting out of our seats, talking to each other about numbers and requiring participation from everyone.  I'd say that will be a very successful lesson for the first day of school!


Update:  here are the questions I have for the fist day this year.  I decided to print them out on labels so that it will be quicker to pass out and then I will be able to easily stick them to the collected data sheets.


Do You Know What You are Asking? PDF
What size shoe do you wear?  Word Doc