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First Unit Ready to Go!

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)
  • All of the items are ones I found through MTBoS, TpT, or things I created myself.
  • I will have students simply state a verbal exit ticket to me per my 3-minute rule (I stole the idea from a blog post that I can't seem to remember. If it was you - thank you!)
  • The concept quiz will be delivered using the Big Ideas Math online assignment system.
  • My school uses Big Ideas Math resources. I tried to make the content match as much as possible to the textbook, but ended up rearranging some things.
  • We will use an interactive notebook. Anytime you see RHS, it means right-hand-side of the notebook. LHS is left-hand-side. RHS is for teacher input, LHS is for student output.
Here is a video of the interactive notebook pages for this unit:


Hopefully I can keep this momentum going even after school starts - which is next week! 😳
Let me know what you think and if you have trouble with any of the links. Also, I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE any ideas you have for geometry projects.

Best,
-Rosanne

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