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All About Ratios and Intro to Proportions

Ratios and ProportionsThis past week we have been working hard and heavy on understanding ratios to build a strong basis for proportions. We ended the week with an intro to proportions and starting solving them from word problems. My students continue to amaze me with what they are capable of that I would never have imagined after the past three years in 8th grade and it seeming like they knew nothing from the prior year. I owe it all to the detailed INB I promise!We started with reviewing what ratios were, how to write them and compare them. This lesson was a refresher from the year before but I could see that some were struggling to remember so these notes made it SO helpful!

The next day was our 90 minute day so we were able to go into more detail and depth with our lesson over rates and unit rates. Let me tell you, taking them shopping in our notes was a riot! They loved being able to understand the tags at the grocery store that have the price per ounce now! Then timing our pulse was a ton of fun. In each class there were a few students who weren’t able to find it so of course I told them that meant they were dead. LOL! Now, I did go over and help them find their pulse and taught them a few new words in the process (esophagus, trachea, etc.) This activity really hit them to know the difference between a rate and a unit rate.

They finished the day with a “Post It, Prove It” to “Explain the Difference between rate and unit rate. Provide examples!”I got some rockin’ answers and ended up giving it as a grade. They were mastering an “I Can” statement through their Post It, Prove It! Gotta love simple assessments like that!

Day 3 was our slide into what proportions are, how we use them and how we could compare them in real-life situations. My students were really rocking this by day 3 and being able to use correct vocabulary while going through the process and all!

Since they had now been introduced to proportions through our Interactive Notebook lesson, I wanted to see what they had retained and could apply from the previous days. Enter the trusty Exit Ticket! Now, I would have normally done this type question as a “Post It, Prove It” because it is open-ended and allows for them to show me what they know but after two days of doing them, we had to do something different.

Each student got a copy of the Exit Ticket (I am a stickler about not handing these as they come in as I don’t want them to work ahead) and I talked about what I expected and even modeled it (shown above). When I was grading these it was either a 100 (did everything and clearly understood), 70 (didn’t complete the question- most didn’t explain), 50 (had something written but didn’t clearly make sense- MUST COME TO TUTORING), or a 0 (had NONE of these).

As you can see part of the Exit Ticket allows them to tell me where they think they are on their level of understanding. This worked WONDERFULLY! I told them that the color wasn’t part of the grade and in the end was only for me to see so I could help them further. Those that did need more help came into tutoring this week and we played Increase or Decrease and talked through a lot of it together to get some further understanding of the material.

Okay, off to go write the rest of the unit as we are now onto similar figures! We rocked our three-page mini book today (one of the 81 templates in my Flippable Template Pack) and I can’t wait to share that with you after my third class does it tomorrow. Gotta love the modified block scheduling.

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