Math Dodgeball

My memories as a high school math student involved going to class, sitting and taking notes.  Then doing 1-45 odds for homework every night.

I became a math teacher to help break that trend and do something different once I had my own room. Obviously we take notes, solve math problems, and do homework but I do it in a different way. Today, we were practicing the properties of exponents.

Yesterday,  we practiced expanding and recognizing the patterns for the properties:  product of powers and power to a power. Today, we worked on classifying. I placed a problem on the board and students classified it. However, we didn't just sit silently at our desks to do this.

 Student directions: 

• Take out a sheet of paper. 
• Label the front side - product of powers 
• Label the back - power to a power

Teacher Directions:

• Split the class in two equal groups. 
• Send each group went to a different side of the room

Students then they wadded up their paper (created during student directions) and a game of dodgeball ensued. We played for 30 seconds and the team with the most people remaining earned one point. At the end of the round, they classified the problem written on the board and simplified it. Then we played dodgeball again. By the end of the lesson, they had practiced exponent properties and had fun doing it!

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