Comparing and Scaling Partner Quiz Tip

Teach CMP?  This is my first year teaching the textbook series and I have been making many "do next year" notes to myself.  This tip/note I thought would be great to share with everyone who teaches the 7th grade book. 

I gave the Comparing and Scaling partner quiz last week and ran into the problem that students didn't realize you can't buy single hamburger buns when comparing prices for 30 students.  I didn't want to stop everyone during the quiz to explain the problem and didn't realize the issue until I started checking/dotting students' quizzes.  As I tried to think on my toes about the problem a light bulb went off!  OK so it wasn't quite a light bulb but more of a flashback to one of my favorite blogs! Leslie over at Jack of all trades  posted a video of clip from the Movie Father of the Bride to support LCM.  Although my students weren't working with LCM this clip fit PERFECTLY into the quiz.  

As with every partner quiz students turn the quiz in for the teacher to review once complete.  I dot problems with a colored pen for students to go back and review/correct.  Because many students do not get a chance to go back to correct by the end of class, I started giving students one period the next day to finish corrections.  Because almost every student missed the hamburger bun question I started class with the movie clip. 

This scene never gets old :)

I told students before I showed the video that the clip was meant to help them with one of the questions on the quiz.  Everyone seemed to know after the clip which question to correct.  Even my special ed students (who finished after school) were able to tell me about the clip HOURS later and figure out what to do with the hamburger buns.  

What a fun way to incorporate real world math problems into the math class!  I wish I could find a video clip for every math concept!