Dragonbox...an IN for Algebra

I heard about Dragonbox during Thanksgiving break.  Knowing that our unit on solving equations was coming up, I bought the app and played around with it a bit.  It was weird.  Different.  And perfect for middle school!  As a math teacher who lives and breathes the rules of algebra, I immediately caught on to the "rules" of the game and was anxious to see how my students would respond.

I introduced the app by telling them they were gamers that were going to create cheat sheets, but that we didn't know the rules, so they would have to write the rules down as they learned them.  As I listened to students get into the game, I had to laugh as I heard comments such as, "This isn't math!", "What are we doing?", and "This doesn't make sense."

They persevered through the beginning stages and the room began to get quiet as they worked through the levels, recording the rules as they went.  Slowly but surely they started to conquer the levels/chapters.

Some students began to see the connection as to why Mrs. McCabe would allow an hour to play this game.  Some students remained in the dark.  For these students that didn't see the connection, it will be fun tomorrow to tie it to equations so they can see the comparison and analogies between black and white algebra rules and the funky Dragonbox characters they had just spend a class period with!

Even though I had played the game enough to get the basics, I loved listening to the conversations and learning more about the game.  It is truly amazing how every little detail ties into an algebra concept.  For instance, I had totally missed the "yums" and the "yucks" when the dragon would eat.  But this didn't get by the students, and eventually neither did the meaning behind the yum and yuck.

Light bulb moments happened for students and myself as the rules became more apparent.  I knew that if you added a character to one side you had to do it to the other.  I just did it so fast, that I never noticed that the side began to crack if I didn't add it to the other.  One student spoke out that he didn't understand the cracking.  When another student answered, "Its because it's not balanced", the room immediately became brighter for him as he just realized what he had said and now made the connection to solving equations.

After the initial discovery session, I had each table group log into TodaysMeet for fast collaboration on all the rules.  We could have shared out as a class, but our goal was just to get the information out there for all to see, and to have a transcript to refer to for future lessons.  TodaysMeet worked perfectly.  Students could see what each group posted.  I would ask questions for clarification, and students would answer in complete sentences addressing not only the answer but the question as well for better understanding.

Using TodaysMeet also allowed me to not only informally assess their understanding of the game but which tables had made the connection to math.

Tomorrow we will compare the Dragonbox rules to the rules used in Algebra and solve some one-step problems using a TopHat organizer and problems I wrote to go along with each rule.