This is my second year teaching upper elementary. When I started doing my lesson plans for input/output I think I literally cringed. This area in math last year was Crazyville! No matter how hard I worked or how long I taught, I couldn't seem to get them to understand that 1 foot was 12 inches, but 2 feet was not 13 inches. Know what I mean?
This year I am bound and determined to break through. I scoured the internet for ideas and have compiled them here. I encourage you to read through these and use them. After teaching this week, you could tell their little light bulbs lit up. To me, this has been like a hallelujah kind of thing for them.
First I started with this story.
In this story, the couple find a magical pot that makes two of everything. He puts his coin purse in it, out comes two coin purses. She drops her hairpin in it, out comes two hair pins. Get it?
We worked in large group for awhile. I drew a pot on the board. The pot had a X2 on it. On one side I wrote "1 coin." I asked my class what would happen to the coin if I put it in a pot that multiplies by 2. They answered 2. We continued this making a column on the left side of the pot (input) and a column on the left side (output). Then I erased the X2 on the pot and changed it to +6 and we started practicing with that. Explain that what is written on the pot is the "Rule." Click here to find a workmat with the pot on it for practice.
The next day when we worked on this, we shifted from the pot example to using our brains and incorporated some whole brain teaching ideas from my lovely coworker Ms. Claussen. I would say "What's your input?!" and they would shout the number. Then I would say "What's your machine?!" and they would say "Our brain!" Then they pointed to their head and made "Beep Beep Beep" robot noises. Then I would say "What's your output?!" and they would shout the answer.
I LOVE using this ^ for more than one reason. It teaches that the number has to be changed by the rule. It has to be put through the machine. If they bring me their work and it has any weird answers that just continued the +1 pattern they tend to do, I circle it and tell them the number has to be put through the machine. Teaching it this way gives me a way to give them feedback they understand.
When they are given work that is has missing input, I teach them to use the inverse operation to solve. If the rule is x3, but you are missing the input and only have the output of 9, they must use the inverse operation of multiplication (division) to solve.
Check out the awesome resources on this at this site
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