Thursday, October 18, 2012

GEMS!

I saw @jreulbach's foldable for order of operations and just loved the idea of using the mnemonic GEMS versus using PEMDAS.

Foldable from http://ispeakmath.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/20120918-102456.jpg




To me it just seemed to point out that multiply and divide are on one level of the steps and subtract and add are on the same level.  The fact that the mnemonic also has a visual shape that goes along with what your problem looks like when you show your work clearly is simply brilliant.  I used to say your work should like an upside-down pyramid, but now I can say show your GEMS!

While I loved Julie's foldable, we have a binder system that I have to follow and resources etc. need to be 3-hole punched and put into the binder section for each class.  So, I made a 2-sided resource for the students to add to their math section.  So far it seems to be catching on.  I had a student today tell me that they remembered to show their GEMS.


SIDE 1 of GEMS Resource


SIDE 2 of GEMS Resource

We'll call this a made4math even though it isn't Monday!  If I waited until Monday, it may never have been blogged!