I like to use alternative ways of assessing students' understanding. A couple of years ago I used card houses as a way to teach algebraic expressions to my algebra and pre-algebra students. This year, I designed a lesson where students built card towers, gathered data, then created a poster describing the method of building, the dependent and independent variables, the linear equation resulting, and a graph of their results. Students used their equations to predict the height from the floor of a 10-story card tower, a 25-story card tower, and 131-story card tower, which is the height of the world record tower to date. Each pair of students presented their findings in poster format for their grade. Oh, and I added a prize for the tallest free standing tower. We began the lesson with a short video showing the record holder for the tallest card tower. Our efforts were hampered by the new decks of cards I had purchased which were slippery. However, that challenge spurred the students on to more innovative tower building strategies, as you can see from the photos here. I did not get a photo of an interesting strategy that involved a series of boxes made from cards, stacked on one another. The winning tower, shown above, was three stories tall, 27 cm. They won their choice of sports-themed hacky sacks, a popular prize. This year, I teach my eighth graders twice on Fridays so a longer plan such as this fits the bill. I gave the students 30 minutes to build their towers, and used an online timer. The lesson was successful, and produced great results.
And, we had a lot of comic relief as the timer ticked down and the slippery cards slipped. It was very interesting, and all were engaged.
My pre-algebra and algebra classes are learning about algebraic expressions, also called variable expressions. It is important for them to be able to observe patterns, to identify the constant and changing parts of those patterns and to write variable expressions that represent the patterns. Yesterday we built card houses with that intent. I demonstrated and off they went. With each layer, they had to measure how high the top was from the floor. They quickly found they didn't have to measure from the floor each time, because the height of the table didn't change. The house of cards were approximately 9cm tall per story, so each additional story added 9cm to the total. We built a table of the data, and decided what would happen with a card house any number of stories high. We made the table below, then the students told me how far from the floor a card house of 10 stories would be, 15 stories would be. They've got this... finding patterns, writing expressions, making predictions. And, they had a blast.
I like to use alternative ways of assessing students' understanding. A couple of years ago I used card houses as a way to teach algebraic expressions to my algebra and pre-algebra students. This year, I designed a lesson where students built card towers, gathered data, then created a poster describing the method of building, the dependent and independent variables, the linear equation resulting, and a graph of their results. Students used their equations to predict the height from the floor of a 10-story card tower, a 25-story card tower, and 131-story card tower, which is the height of the world record tower to date. Each pair of students presented their findings in poster format for their grade. Oh, and I added a prize for the tallest free standing tower. We began the lesson with a short video showing the record holder for the tallest card tower. Our efforts were hampered by the new decks of cards I had purchased which were slippery. However, that challenge spurred the students on to more innovative tower building strategies, as you can see from the photos here. I did not get a photo of an interesting strategy that involved a series of boxes made from cards, stacked on one another. The winning tower, shown above, was three stories tall, 27 cm. They won their choice of sports-themed hacky sacks, a popular prize. This year, I teach my eighth graders twice on Fridays so a longer plan such as this fits the bill. I gave the students 30 minutes to build their towers, and used an online timer. The lesson was successful, and produced great results. 
