For those of you that have no idea of what I'm talking about, here is the throwback to the Marcia, Marcia, Marcia episode!

But I digress....

So we have introduced factoring polynomials this week.  Fun times, right?

I have come to realize that one of the key pieces of knowing how to factor polynomials is to know how to factor.  And my kids struggle tremendously with their times tables.  (I did not go the route of allowing them a times table chart in their notebooks this year but may consider it next year!)

So today I stumbled upon a somewhat fun what to prove my point that they didn't know factors or times tables at Middle School Math Moments blog.  She has come up with the Factor Game, which she details on her site and we used it today in a coupe of classes.  We played Ya'll (the class) versus Me, which was interesting and I was told rigged, etc. etc. etc.  

But one of my classes after a near miss of 409 to 410 in the picture below they finally beat me on the next round!  It was fun to engage with some of them in this manner!

​

So my kids love my baking for some reason.... I'd like to think that I'm not a bad cook so it warms my heart that they enjoy it! 

One of the things that I have done more of this semester is setting goals for them to reach, as a class, for their assessments.  In doing so, they are rewarded.  As a poor teacher and mother of 4, I'm trying to keep the rewards in line with what I can afford.... so cookies it is!  Although Bodie would argue that our grocery bill has increased dramatically as my kids test scores have continued to be higher and higher!

The favorite cookie, and most requested cookie, is my Grandma Jane's No-Bake Cookies.  These have been a childhood favorite of mine that combine two of my favorite things - chocolate and peanut butter.......mmmmmmm.  

So several of my kids have asked for the cookie recipe so it is linked here!

This is what my kitchen table looked like after one of their most recent quizzes!!!  #proudteacher

It sounded fun okay?

This was a topic I always remembered enjoying in school because like so much else of math, if you just follow the steps or rules you can get to the correct answer!  

So here are the pages from our Notebooks today (or that we will be getting this week)!  Mostly stolen from Math='sLove blog (I love her to pieces!) and some homemade myself!

Using specific mathematics vocabulary is not something that I do well. So it's something that I have really focused on this year because I want these kids to hear and see the words that is specific to math that way as they progress throughout school it will not be so intimidating to them.

I loved the way that this broke down the world "polynomial" and described it using examples and non-examples.

I loved this poof book! I kind of wish that we had done something like this at the begin in of the year (as far as the underlining of terms and identifying the coefficients and constants!) I think some of the kids could have really used the visual and it's something that I want to try to integrate next year.

I made this one up and need to add some more examples of like terms. The kids really seemed to struggle with this so we may do a matching activity Monday.

I puffy heart love this box method!!!!! I'd never seen it before - I always have used the old school FOIL method - and this is sooooo much more simpler! The kids are struggling with the fact that you don't add exponents when you are adding the terms of polynomials (we just covered exponents where they were multiplying/adding exponents) so will need to follow back up with this next week as well!

All in all I love having these notes! If you haven't checked out Sarah Hagan's Math='s Love blog (linked on the audio all blog resources page) you need to! She's amazing!!!