Grade 9 strategies to use in the classroom

Two weeks ago, we had a presentation for our "teach a lesson" assignment by one of our colleagues in class.  The topic was slope of a line and they created a very interactive game that was designed to engage students while they were learning.  Instead of just practicing boring slope questions from a textbook or assignment, the teacher candidate created a game called battle slopes.  This game was very similar to battle ships but combined the idea of slopes of a line and equations of a line  How this game worked was that each player picked a partner and was given a grid with an x-axis and a y-axis (each grid was hidden from the opposing player).  They then had to place dots which represent different sized boats (there was a 2 dot boat, 3 dot boat, 4 dot 5 dot boat) on the grid wherever they choose.  Next, much like the game of battleships, instead of calling out a co-ordinate like A5, they would call out a random slope of a line.  For example, my first move I called out 2x+3.  My opponent had to then draw that line on their gamecard, if it hit any of the points they placed, then they would declare "hit".  If it didn't hit any points, then my opponent would say "miss".  This would continue until one of us hit all of the battleships. 

    I thought that this was a very interactive game as I had lots of fun playing it but I was still learning at the same time.  Although I know how to plot the slope of the line, it was a good refresher for me and I could really see myself using this in class.  Another thing that the colleague did was have a mathematical discussion about the game after everyone finished.  We essentially all compared our different strategies to one another to see what the ideal method was to "hitting all the ships".  Some people (like myself) just more or less randomly guessed until they hit a point and then moved the y-intercept to hit another point.  Other people started with y=x, then y=x+1, then y=x+2 until they had the entire board covered.  We also discussed whether it was better to call out a steep line or a flat line when playing this game. 

Overall, going into my next block which will be a math teachable I really learned from this colleagues presentation.  I truly feel that they did a great job and this is definitely an interactive game that I could use in my placement near the end of the slope unit.  I feel that this would be great practice for students if they were studying for a quiz or a test or even if they needed clarification on the slope of the line.  Moreover, the mathematical discussion at the end was a great way to get everybody involved and see all the different strategies that one could approach this game.