Direct Variations

This week I taught direct variations to my algebra class.  I think that this is an idea that is so simple, yet ends up being so confusing to kids (which is my fault).  I used to teach this section the way the textbok did, but it just made it all so confusing with the terminology and examples and they way they had it set up.  So a couple years ago instead of copious notes that ended up being a total waste, I broke it down into this chart.  It seems to do a bit of a better job of simplifying the idea.

Then this year I was talking with another teacher who wondered why we call the rate of change "k" in a direct variation and then "m" in the next chapter for linear equations.  Duh..why didn't I think of this?  For a kid that is already confused with math and using letters, we shouldn't be changing up letters like that when it's really the same idea.  So I nixed the k this year and just stuck with y = mx as the equation.

So my ISN pages look like this:

Below is the notes chart.  I printed it double sided at about 75% size so it fit in the notebook nicely.



Below is the file I used for the sorting activity.  One half page for each student.


some things about the sorting activity:

• I didn't realize that I had 3x - y = 0 was on there twice until a student pointed it out
• I realized too late that all three tables were direct variations so in the file I changed one of them to make it not
• in the future I think I would also like to add graphs in there too

So that is all.  Overall they actually seemed to really get the idea of what a direct variation means so I'm happy.

In other news...

I know I'm late to the game here, but I finally picked up one of these tonight from Home Depot to make my own storage drawers like I've seen all over blogs and pinterest.

Home Depot Storage Container

It's probably a little sad how excited I am to organize supplies into these little drawers and make labels. I'm sure I'll share when I do.