![]() ![]() I really ham up the story and have even been known to bring props like ski clothes and other ski paraphanelia. One of my characters is “Slope Dude.” I love to tell the kids the story of slope dude, a not so bright guy who goes skiing and learns about math in the process. I was presenting at our state’s math conference and was telling the audience about how I often use stories or skits to introduce new math topics. Hi, I read your blog and I have to tell you the story of the cheesy Slope Dude Video. I really love the online PLN! Thanks Slope Dude! : ) It also defined the word “undefined” a “cuss word” in mathematics, which really entertained my 6th graders (hopefully enough so that they will actually remember it long term)! It is actually so catchy that I now say, “Puff, puff positive” and “Nice negative” every day. It is cheesy and fun – just up my math video alley. I believe that adding the equation to each slide will fill in this gap.Īfter my slope lesson I introduced my students to my best slope discovery of all – a fantastic “Slope Dude” video that I found on Teacher Tube. While most students did get the connection between the graph of a negative slope and -M in the equation, I need to be more explicit to increase comprehension for all of my students. Next year I need to add more positive and negative slopes with the corresponding equations. I then presented them with animated skiers going up, down, and off of the sides of mountains! I love using Powerpoint, as I can make it much more fun than my usual little stick guy falling off an undefined slope drawn on the whiteboard. ![]() Some kids were disappointed that we decided not to use their more creative names, but most students were very happy with good old “Slope”. ![]() Instantly, many kids said, “Slope!” like they had discovered it all by themselves. Since I’m a Powerpoint fan now, I made a Powerpoint full of ski slopes and put a big ski slope on the screen just as I finished this talk. BUT, I told them that we would have to give M not only an interesting name, but also a descriptive name so that M would not easily be forgotten. As a 6th grade teacher, at this point I had kids yell out crazy random names. I told them that M was a pretty pathetic name, and that we needed to come up with a better name for M. We talked again about how M determined the steepness of the line and which direction the line went. The students got out their graphing worksheets to review. I picked where I left off in the previous lesson, and had a “reminder” discussion about M. When you think slopes, think about skiing!.Read a graph from left to right, just like you read a book.There are two things that I focus on when teaching slope: This year, I added some Powerpoint visuals and a very fun Teacher Tube video to spice up my lesson. I always use the ski analogy to teach students slope. ![]()
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