This is my first year using the Connected Math Project (CMP2) for my 7th grade math curriculum. We are finishing the Stretching and Shrinking book which uses characters called the "Wumps" to teach similarity. The Wumps are plotted on a coordinate plane and students look to see which characters are imposters. My students had been doing a TON of plotting/graphing over the past month so I decided to get creative with this lesson. Thanks to Leslie over at Jack of all Trades I found peg boards were the perfect way to display our wumps!
I went to Home Depot and purchased the 8ft by 4ft sheet of peg board. I had it cut in the store to 2 ft by 2 ft squares.
I bought golf tees (still need to buy more) for the points and yarn to create the line segments.
Students worked in groups of four to create the characters in their math notebooks and then created one character on the pegboard. My students were TOTALLY into this activity!
I loved how they really had to work together to get the figure together (they earned lots of group norm marbles this day!). It took some real problem solving to move the yarn around the golf tees and not pull out other tees.
And now....
THE WUMPS
I ran out of golf tees but found flat push pins for the eyes. I put tape around the sharp point to help them stay in the hole.
Can you spot the imposters???
So fun to use the peg boards!! The Wumps are still up in my room since we are still in the Stretching and Shrinking book. I don't want to take them down! I can't wait to find another lesson for the peg boards!
Happy Wednesday!
What a fabulous idea! I teach 7th grade and we use the series MathThematics, but last year I did the CMP (not 2) Wrapping and Filling unit with my accelerated class because we always finish our text and have extra time.
ReplyDeleteThanks Sherrie! I taught MathThematics for three years before CMP. The peg boards would be a great tool when you get to scatter plots in the spring!
ReplyDeleteI am a new teacher and we have just moved away from connected math, however the other teachers I work with reccomended I try this activity. It was cute and helped review graphing skills, which is always a plus.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great idea...I taught CMP (phase 1) for the last 5 years and taught the WUMP lesson. I never thought of creating large images. Even though we adopted new curriculum for this year, I believe we still plan to have the students do the wump activity - I will have to use your idea and have them do it in groups.
ReplyDeleteI am planning to use a peg board to teach about slope in my pre-Algebra class. We're using golf tees to plot the points of a given line and then will lay a small board I had my husband notch out for tires of match box cars so they can race their cars and get an idea of what steeper or flatter slope look like in an equation as well as negative and zero slope and undefined slope.
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