Movement: Slope Dude

I’ve been in search of a movement activity/game that I thought I could get my 8th graders to buy into.  I’ve written here and here about things I do with 6th graders, but I haven’t been brave enough to try those with my older kids yet.  I use stand and talks frequently, but I was looking for something that was more like a game.

Insert slope dude.

I had first read about Slope Dude on Sarah’s blog a while back.  I loved it, but at the time I wasn’t teaching classes where this was relevant (in hindsight, that probably wouldn’t have mattered, I should have done it anyway).  Now that I’m teaching 8th grade, I was excited to use it in a place the fit into what I was teaching.

The day before I showed students the video, I pumped them up about the video we were going to watch that would change their lives forever and how it was a SUPER high budget video.  😉  I love giving them an excuse to roll their eyes at their crazy math teacher!

In class the next day, we watched the video.  They had a love/hate relationship with the video, and it was fantastic.

I put this slide up on the board completely taken from Sarah and told them to stand up.  They groaned and complained, but not for long!

I played exactly how Sarah did.  We first went through the motions together before playing.  It’s just like Simon Says.   Here’s her post on Slope Dude Says, and you can download her posters here.

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These are comments from my students in the past couple weeks:

“We were going to play Slope Dude Says in English, but then the teacher came back.”

“I feel bad for Z.  He’s missing out on slope dude.”

“Can we play again??”

“Are we going to play Slope Dude Says today?”

During work time, I saw numerous students move their arms to help them determine the sign of the slope before finding the actual slope.

“I’m pretty sure L wasn’t here for slope dude at all, can we play it today?”

“Even when we’re done with this stuff, can we still play Slope Dude Says?”

 

I call that a win.