Teaching conditional statements is one of my favorite things. In fact, the entire second unit I teach (logic and proofs) is probably my favorite unit. I love how it stretches students' minds and gets them to think more critically. Since we don't have an honors geometry, it easily levels the playing field for my mixed-abilities geometry classes. One of my students' favorite days in geometry is the first day of our logic and proofs unit. Like most geometry curricula, ours starts with conditional statements. To introduce students to the concept and get them motivated, I teach them to play Minesweeper. Growing up, I had no idea how to play this logical, amazingly addictive game. And then I began teaching high school! Most of the geometry teachers in my school introduce logical reasoning with Sudoku, but since I've been Sudoku-ed out since I was 11, I decided to teach them Minesweeper. I start by showing off my mad Minesweeper skills by beating a small grid in
Confession - I have NEVER had an entire unit planned before school started starting the unit. But this summer, I got excited. I made the decision to not test my basic geometry students. Basic geometry is my school's non-proof-based geometry, so it has a mix of about 30-50% special education students, a few ELL students, and the rest are students who simply struggle in math. I'm sure you can guess that test days don't always go over so well and are often predicable. Several students do very well, some students bomb it, and little is gained from the test experience. That's why I plan to switch to a project-based geometry this year for my basic geometry students. We will still have a few concept quizzes to make sure procedural fluency is up-to-snuff, but my main assessment strategy will be projects. Here's a sneak peak of my first unit (fully planned!!). Some quick things to note: I teach on a block schedule (83 minutes per day, every day for a semester) A