Christmas is coming, is all around us, just give in. What about helping Santa pack all those presents using Math Skills? Yeah, Santa needs us. That was enough to hook the students. For our Patterns and In and Out Tables topic closure, I decided to apply those skills into a "real life" situation.
Santa's Elf in Chief was under the weather and we had to help with 3 packaging stations.
At each station, students had to solve some scenarios like:
- matching the correct rule (expressed as equations) with the table,
- identify the correct rule description (expressed in words) for different items
- infer the rule to complete the table missing boxes
Students/elves worked in group of threes to solve the problems, before the Supervisor (AKA teacher) would sign their work order, they had to justify verbally their answers. The activity was successful, students were engaged and worked at their own pace throughout the stations. Some required assistance and took longer, but they persevered and were able to demonstrate their knowledge. The tasks were designed to increase in difficulty, this gave me an opportunity to strategically place some students in the easier or more complex tasks to balance their time. It was a difficult task, it required collaboration and attention to detail. Next time, I would try groups of 2 to make sure all students are engaged and participating.
Special shoutout to the USPS that kindly provided the boxes.
