Sie sind auf Seite 1von 272
The Authors Steve Marcy and Janis Marcy Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Limited Reproduction Permission: Permission to duplicate these materials is limited to the teacher for whom they are purchased. Reproduction for an entire school or school district is unlawful and strictly prohibited. The authors wish to thank Mr. Bob Fine and Mr. Terry Green for their helpful suggestions, and especially all our former students in Santa Monica who worked with these puzzles as they were being developed. Edited by Lyn Savage Cover by Nimbus Design 1983, 1989, 1996 Creative Publications Two Prudential Plaza, Suite 1175 Chicago, IL 60601 — Printed in U.S.A. ISBN: 0-88488-791-X 1.99 NOTES FROM THE AUTHORS ALGEBRA WITH PIZZAZZ! in a Binder is designed fo provide practice with skills and concepts taught in first-year algebra courses, The series is an extension and continuation of the PRE- ALGEBRA WITH PIZZAZZ! series, also published by Creative Publications. We believe that mastery of algebra skills and concepts requires both good teaching and a great deal of practice. Our goal is to provide puzzle activities that make this practice more effective. We hhave ‘sled to build into these activities thrae characteristics that increase the effectiveness of practice. 1. KNOWLEDGE OF RESULTS Various devices are used in the puzzles to tell students whether their answers are correct. Feedback occurs immediately after the student works each exercise, For example, ita particular answet is nat in the code or scrambled answer lst the student knows its incorrect He or she can then try again or ask for help. Adltional feedback and reinforcement occurs when the student finds a puzzle solut on that is appropriate. We have tound that students greatly appreciate and benefit from this immediate knowledge of results 2. CONTROL OF EXERCISE VARIATION AND DIFFICULTY ‘The puzzles within each major topic ere carefully sequenced ¢0 that each one builds on skills and concepts previously covered. Each puzzle focuses on a specitic abjective. The sequence of exercises within each puzzle is designed to guide students in incremental, step-by-step fashion toward mastery of the objective. Exercises that depart Substantially from this incremental development, or that require extraordinary insight, have not been included. On the other hand, the exercises provide enough variety and challenge to hold the students’ interest and to represent the skill or concept fairly. Our goal is student success. That is, after a reasonable period of explanation and examples, students will be able \o do the exercises and thereby achieve the objective at a respectable level. 3. A MOTIVATING GOAL FOR THE STUDENT The puzzles are designed so that students will construct a joke or unscramble the answer to a riddle in the process of checking their answers. The humer operates as an incentive, because the students don't get the punch line until they complete the exercises. White algebra students sometimes decry these jokes as “dumb” or even ‘very dumb,” our experience has been that students us sally look forward to solving the puzzles and that they do enjoy the jokes and riddles. In addition, the variety and novelty of procedures for solving the puzzles help capture student interest. By keeping scrambled answer lists short and procedures simple, we have tried to minimize the time spent on finding anewers or doing other puzzle mechanics. \n addition to these efforts to make the puzzles effective, we have tried to make them easy to use. The objective for each puzzle is given both at the bottom of the puzzle page and in the table of contents. The major topic divisions and specitic objectives correspond to those in widely-used algebra textbooks. Nearly every puzzle requires duplicating only one page. Finally, because the puzzles are self-correcting, they can eliminate the task of correcting assignments. We hope that you will find the teaching of algebra, and your students the learning of algebra, less dificult and more fun with these puzzles, Steve and Janis Marcy ili

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen