Attention 5th, 6th, & 7th Grade Math Teachers!
34% State Average Correct in Texas
on May 2021 MATH test
Readiness Standard Category 1 S.E. 6.3D
For those of you who teach outside of Texas, this skill requires the understanding of how to use a pair of positive and negative integers and the correct operation to find a sum, product, and quotient.
For my strategy, I have made an analogy with a deck of playing cards of being in the red in business as negative numbers, being in the black as positive numbers, and the joker as the operation being used. Since diamonds and clubs are black, they will represent positive integers. Because hearts and diamonds are red, they will stand for the negative integers. In the case of the cards, the joker could also stand for zero since there are no zeroes in a deck of playing cards.
You may want to have a blank sheet of paper folded into four parts ready before you watch the video. I have four rules that remind your students when to add, subtract, multiply, or divide, AND which sign will be used once the operation has been completed. For the answer choices, there were three correct equations, BUT the question was asking for the only one that was NOT true. The answer choice broke my rule 4, which is modeled in the video.
Disclaimer: I do not represent TEA or STAAR, and they do not endorse any independent consultants, products, or strategies other than their own. This video is simply A way to help students understand how to work with positive and negative integers, not THE ONLY way.
IMPORTANT:
I would not be making the following statement if the math scores across the state were not so low in almost ALL grade levels this past year.
Any campus or district personnel who gives a directive that you can only use ONE program or curriculum to meet the needs of ALL of your students is making it extremely difficult for teachers who need to differentiate their instruction for some students. Several of you have told me statements like this through email and/or messenger: "If everyone can't use those strategies, no one can." Teachers are unique individuals, not robots who should be forced to use scripted teaching styles without being warned, threatened or fired. Since we are talking about math here, the missing variable in that kind of a philosophy would be the students, many of whom have a variety of learning styles. CAN I GET AN AMEN?!
