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tent to a real world application that further devel oped students ’ understanding about slopes.

Station 2, “ Find the Mistakes, ” gave the students the opportunity to recognize where the math could go wrong. Identifying common misconceptions and fixing the mistakes, helped the students to be aware common errors when working with basic linear equation and slope problems (See Figure 5). Stu dents worked individually at this station, but teach ers were closely monitoring student work and con versations to ensure misconceptions were ad dressed. The common misconceptions identified at this station included adding instead of subtracting, or vise versa, when moving terms across the equal to find the slope and using the distributive proper ty appropriately.

Figure 4: Student completed warm - up

(see Figure 4). Familiarity with the content led to a smooth lesson. The PBL framework linked the con

Figure 6: Station 1 “ Research Station ” Student Work

The “ Research Station ” (Station 1) and the “ Slopes in the Real World ” (Station 4) were excel lent examples of students deeper understanding of slopes. During these stations, students identified slopes in pictures and object that are not typically considered in the math classroom. Students made deeper connections to the content. Figures 6 and 7 show students finding slopes outside of the carte sian coordinate plane displayed on the paper.

Student learning was evident with their final prod ucts. Students connected their created designs on

Figure 5: “ Find the Mistakes ” student work

Virginia Mathematics Teacher vol. 46, no. 2

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