Hodges Herald: task cards scavenger hunt

Another Tried it Tuesday with Holly.

First, a home tried it. I needed some healthy snacks for a game night since like most people, I am on a health kick.

I made these:

Healthy snack ideas for your Sunday Football parties: Afitnurse.com Alyssa Schomaker

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Mine were a little messier looking and I didn't do the black olives only because I wasn't sure if my guests would like them. They were a hit though. Several of my guest hadn't even eaten zucchini before.

I also made these:

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This is my second try at this. It was better than the first, but they still aren't a huge hit. You have to eat them hot because melted cheese is so good. They just seemed doughy to me. It wasn't a complete fail though.

And now my school tried it: mixing up how I use task cards. I use task cards a lot and sometimes my students groan when I pull them out. Mostly because they know they have to do about 20 of them. The last time, I mixed it up, I took four sets and separated them. Students did four from each set. It was 16, but they thought they were getting a break. (if you consider 4 a break, then I guess they did)

This time, I took the task cards and made a scavenger hunt out of them. I took the 20 task cards, put them all over my room. Then I took the answers (the expression part only) and placed them randomly above or beside the task cards. I made sure the answer to the specific task card was not placed above the question. What I didn't think about was the scavenger hunt should have looped. When I was working through it with my first period, I realized some of them took you back to a question you had already answered. Oops. It was called not being completely prepared. But of course, my kids know me and we just went with it. They knew they had to do all 20 cards. They were up and out of their seats. They were engaged. They were using Math talk. I will do it this way again. I think its good to mix things up. Teaching with a Mountain View talked about this recently on her blog here. She actually has two blogs, one is dedicated to Task Cards. If you are into task cards, you have to check out her site.