Building Bridges

This semester I'm taking on a new class. The last period of my day I am teaching a transition math course. The students are in middle school (even though their classes are held at the high school) but because of their age need to transition into our high school. My job is to get them ready for Algebra 1 next year. I'm using the Bridge to Algebra Carnegie text and Cognitive Tutor to get the job done! It's only been two days, but so far I am in love with this class. The students are eager to learn and are really excited about using Carnegie (especially since they know that's what the high school kids are doing).

Today was my first time working with students on the Bridge to Algebra version of the Cognitive Tutor. I started them out on the picture algebra unit. I absolutely love that students visually get to see "twice as much", "three times as many", etc. It took them a little while to get used to the tutor but once they got used to drawing the pictures they were soaring through the problems. It was so fun to see them get excited about their bars growing and turing gold. They were helping each other out as they were figuring out how to work the software. These students have had difficulty being successful in school yet they were all successful in class today. The smiles on their faces and enthusiam for gold bars was so contagious!

Here in Michigan we are preparing for a large blizzard. School is already canceled for me tomorrow and it maybe for a few days. One of the things on my to do list for these snow days is to work through some Bridge problems on the tutor. I need to be prepared for helping my students and to properly do so I must make myself familiar with the software units. I'm sure I'll be telling you about more of my exciting discoveries with this new adventure over the rest of the semester!

Stay warm and enjoy your snow day if you're being affected by this blizzard!