I used this Thoughtful Education strategy today with my Algebra I student.  I’ve attached the worksheet I used (ASN Graphing Equations and Inequalities).  I used this strategy as a refresher, since my student is going into the next chapter, and can always benefit from connecting topic areas.  I knew that she was absent a lot during the lessons on graphing inequalities, so I made up this worksheet for her to complete.  When I made up the statements to put on the page, I thought of all of the important things that she will need to remember from the previous chapter to take with her into the current chapter.  Her evaluation of these statements gave me a better idea of what she still needed to revisit.

First of all, she said something that told me she didn’t know what an inequality was.  Because I was having a discussion with her, instead of just giving her busy work, I was able to pick up on this and correct it right away.  Once she knew what an inequality was (a statement using < or > or “less than or equal to” or “greater than or equal to”), she was able to work through the statements on her own, and then we reviewed them together.  During our discussion, it was clear she was solid on many of the aspects of graphing, but when it came to the shading statement, I realized she didn’t know how to actually graph an inequality, and that we needed more time to practice and review that.

I will definitely use this tool again, both as a pre-teaching tool and a reviewing tool.  Both will help me to know what they have learned correctly, and what we still need to focus on.  In a larger group setting, this will be helpful to know who really understands a certain topic, and who is skating through.