When Math Gets Artsy

Planning engaging lessons and activities in the month of May has always felt like somewhat of a lost cause. May is a battle. Every day in May I gear up for a fight against apathy, burn out, frustration, and "IDC" syndrome from my students. They don't care about anything, except the countdown to summer. To make matters worse, the month of May is usually filled with a final Chapter test, followed by a mind numbing semester review week where I mostly serve as a glorified babysitter, and then the final exams. This year I decided to mix it up and do a final Chapter project instead of a Chapter test. We had just finished our unit of parent functions and the students should now be able to graph linear, quadratic and absolute value functions as well as circles. Rather than test them on these topics, I challenged them to create "something" that demonstrated they could graph all of the parent functions they knew up to this point in a creative way using the Desmos online graphing calculator. Shout out to Desmos, my teaching BFF.

The requirements were simple. Graph a word, phrase, or picture that included at least one of each type of function we had been working with. That was it. The grading was simple, you either did or you didn't meet the requirements. If you didn't, I didn't grade it and gave you feedback on what was needed to meet the requirements. When you met the requirements you were good to go. I think a lot of the reason why these projects turned out so fantastic is that the grading wasn't really the point. As long as you graphed the functions, you got 100%. With out a complicated grading rubric, the creativity became the focal point. 

I am not artistic. It is actually painful for me to try to be creative, but this project even got me feeling sparks on the right side of my brain and I graphed this cute little bumble bee.

Students loved this project. And everyone who turned one in did a phenomenal job. They had 2 full class periods to work on the laptops and then emailed me the link to their graph. Check out some of my favorites below!

A lot of students also chose to graph their name, which was fun to see all the ways they worked to fit each function in. The letter "s" might be one of the most challenging letters, and students found incredibly creative ways to get the "s" to work. 

We had also worked with graphing quadratic inequalities a little bit, and I was REALLY impressed with students who wanted to shade parts of their graph and how desperate they were to figure out how to incorporate inequalities in their graph to be able to do so. So many connections being made!

This ended up being one of the highlights of the year and students (even with all their apathy and summer laziness) expressed how much fun they had creating their projects. Looking forward to May next year when we will do this again. Looking forward to May... I can't believe I said that! 

Worksheet in Disguise: Card Sort

I love card sort days. I love days where students do math with out writing anything down, except for the things they want or need to write down. I love days when you can be wrong and there is no need to erase, grab more paper, or start over. I love days when my laziest kid ends up doing just as much work as my overachiever... and doesn't even know it! TRICKED YA!

I know I am not the only person who feels like students need practice, and lots of it, to solidify a new skill or concept. There's a whole world of research (some good, some not, some contradictory) that discusses at length how many times, and for how long, and for how frequent students need to revisit skills to really retain that information. But handing out worksheet after worksheet seems like a rather boring and socially isolating option. Here is my first way to disguise the worksheet and create an activity that is not only more engaging but also allows for more connections, more communication, and more organized chaos! 

SWBAT: Students will be able to calculate the measures of interior angles, the measures of exterior angles, or the number of sides of polygons given any one of the other pieces of information.

First I created a table and filled in all the answers. It looked like this: 

Then I took away 3 out of the 4 numbers in each row, leaving just one piece of information given. I made sure to rotate the given information so that it allowed for different starting places each time: 

Then, I copied the completed table on colored paper and the empty table on white paper. The colored table got cut up into little cards and put in envelopes, one for each pair of students in my class. Shout out to my awesome TA's who are always so willing to cut paper for me! 

Students then spent the ENTIRE fifty two minute period sorting the cards onto the table. The beautiful thing is that each blank in the table represents a question that could have easily been on a worksheet. This means that this card sort is like a 30 problem worksheet, but in this method students have a lot of flexibility for how they choose to sort the cards. They can rely on connections between the measurements they feel confident about and be pushed and pressed into developing connections they are still working on. Some of the rows were especially challenging since we have never explicitly talked about how to work "backwards" to find the side length or sum when given an interior angle. 

The best part for me is the talking. Partners are talking. A lot. They are teaching each other, challenging each other, arguing with each other, justifying their thinking to each other, and using each other as a resource for knowledge. Its beautiful. 

When kids are done they put the little cards back in the envelope and leave the empty mat on their desks. No writing required (but let's be real... there's a lot of scratch work & scribbling going on). You will also notice that students had their notebooks out with them with our notes from yesterday. I also allowed some students to fill in a blank table (with writing, not cards) if they wanted to add it to their notebooks after the activity was over, but it wasn't required. The notes looked like this (doesn't Ashley have the best note taking skills EVER!?): 

Thirty problems in fifty two minutes with no whining, complaining or groaning? I'll take it any day!

But Do You Ever Give Them a Chance to Write!?

The junior high I used to teach at was working to become an AVID National Demonstration school while I was there. That school, and really our entire Boise District, loves AVID. As a result, I was privileged enough to attend many AVID trainings and even went down to San Diego one year to attend the National AVID Conference. There are countless things I admire about the AVID program, and really love that the high school I am at now also has a strong AVID program. One of the biggest reasons I love AVID is the WICOR teaching method & strategies. 

"AVID’s proven learning support structure, known as WICOR , incorporates teaching/learning methodologies in the critical areas of Writing to Learn, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading to Learn. WICOR provides a learning model that educators can use to guide students in comprehending concepts and articulating ideas at increasingly complex levels (scaffolding) within developmental, general education, and discipline-based curricula. Furthermore, the WICOR model reflects and promotes the expertise and attitudes that will serve students well in their academic lives and careers."

I had a huge "ah ha" moment while at the AVID National Conference when a trainer asked me to share (in front of everyone at the training) how I incorporate the "Writing to Learn" component in my classroom. I was only in my second year of teaching when she asked me that and I immediately froze, realizing that my students NEVER write in my class. They write numbers, and solve problems, and we do a lot of discussing (which is great) but when do I ever give them a chance to write? Shoot. Slap my wrist. I didn't. 

It totally changed the focus of my instruction to always find a way to get them writing in full, complete, beautiful sentences as much as possible. We write when we practice, we write when we assess, and we find ways to articulate our thinking by writing on a regular basis. The result is beautiful. Check out a few of these answers from one of our chapter assessments this past semester: 

Guess what? One of these students is on an IEP and one of these students is on an LEP. Bet you can't tell which one, and that makes me insanely proud! 

Fill That Space!

The week before first semester finals can get REALLY boring with review worksheets and final preparation. It's necessary, but it can be rather tedious and not very entertaining. I teach a math support class to go along with the Geometry class, and we (as a class) decided to take a break from final prep and try out a new game I saw while scrolling through Twitter. We made a few adaptations to fit our needs and what we were trying to practice and named the game "Fill. That. Space" and you have to say it like how Ty Pennington said "Move. That. Bus" on Extreme Home Make Over. That's a mandatory rule. 

Here's how it works: 

1. A person rolls two dice. The numbers on those dice form a two digit number of your choice. So, let's say you roll a 2 and a 4. You can use the number 24 or the number 42. 

2. On your grid paper, you have to draw a rectangle with an area of either 24 or 42. Students are forced at this point to start listing out all the factors of both numbers to make their rectangle. We have been factoring trinomials this semester and trying to come up with the factors during that process is always the hardest part for my struggling students. This game was a GREAT way to practice this skill. Additionally, I made a rule that students had to write the equation to find the area of each rectangle inside the rectangle just reinforce the idea of area and also keep track of each roll. 

3. The goal is to fill the ENTIRE page with rectangles. Any square unit that is not colored at the end counts against you. The goal is to entirely fill your grid paper. So, students also have to think about how they want to break down their area to create a rectangle that best utilizes the space they have left which turned out to be a great exercise is spatial awareness too! 

The winner at the end of the period was the person who had the LEAST number of unclaimed square units.

There were a few road blocks along the way we had to sort out:

Road Block Number 1: Prime Numbers. Some times you get double prime numbers like when you roll a 1 and a 3. 13 sucks and so does 31. So if students could fit a 1 x 13 rectangle, they had to do that. But if the physically didn't have the space to make ANYTHING work, then they could roll again. That was a big issue we had to clarify. 

Road Block Number 2: End of the Game. At the end of the game there is such limited space that many rolls won't work. So, at the end of the game, if students physically can't make any of the factors work for the roll they have, then they can roll again. 

Moving forward I would love to get some spinners that have numbers higher than 1-6. The largest number we could work with was 66. I think a few spinners with 1-9 would make it a little more interesting. 

Overall, I loved this game to practice multiplication, division, factors, rectangular area, or prep for factoring trinomials like we were doing. What other variations could you see adding to the game to make it more interesting? Any ideas? 

Quizizz: Everything I Wish Kahoot! Was

When I first heard about Kahoot I went into full on obsession mode and found reasons to use Kahoot as much as I possibly could. It was awesome. Kids thought it was awesome. And the novelty of the activity had my students engaged...

...for a few weeks. And then, like most things, it got old quick. It probably didn't help that all the teachers in my building had heard about Kahoot! (mainly from me not shutting up about it) and for a few weeks students were subjected to the fast past multiple choice game multiple times a day. I still think Kahoot! has it's place and time in the classroom, but recently I have been researching lots of different websites that work similarly to Kahoot! trying to find the best out there! 

The first one I tried is a website called Quizzizz. 

Quizzizz promotes itself as "free self paced quizzes to review, assess and engage -in class and at home". 

Here are a few things I liked about Quizzizz:

1. Log in with Google. There is nothing worse than having to create a new log in with a new password to write down on a sticky note that I will surely lose. I don't do well with passwords. It's my Achilles heel of classroom organization. 

2. Search public quizzes. I even found a wide assortment of quizzes that connect to the curriculum that our district uses. That's neat! 

3. Live vs Homework. You can start a quiz live for the classroom setting or you can open a window for students to be able to complete the quiz at home. My students have a lot of absences. It sort of just comes with the territory in a low SES school. The homework option is fantastic for students who miss class or want to take it again at home. 

4. Pull Individual Questions. You can start making your own quiz and then just pull individual question from public quizzes. So helpful! In Kahoot!, sometimes I don't want to duplicate an ENTIRE quiz and then have to edit what I want and don't want, and so having the ability to just copy questions over is very flexible. 

5. Self paced. This was HUGE for me. For my students who work a little slower or need more time to get started on each question, Kahoot! is pointless. They quickly give up when they realize that they aren't going to be able to work fast enough to answer. But with Quizzizz students can go as fast or as slow as they want. You can even put up this live feed of how each group is doing, showing progress and accuracy. My students liked the live feed and the desire to not get red chunks in their progress bar was pretty motivating. We have created a pretty solid class culture where we don't fear mistakes or feel embarrassed by making them, so I wasn't worried about publicly displaying this live feed. I think it's important that that kind of culture is there before you post up the live feed. 

6. Immediate feedback. As soon as the student answers a question in Quizzizz it lets them know whether or not they got the answer right. Kahoot! also let's them know but for some reason the instant feedback seemed to be more beneficial in this platform. 

7. Reports. The reports section was awesome. I can go back days later and pull up the report from the quiz. They are easily organized and made entering grades from this quiz super fast and efficient. 

8. Mastery. I had a few students finish the self paced quiz (I had them complete it in partners) and then go back and play again, wanting to get a better score. Once the quiz is live, students can go take it as many times as they want. They just re enter their names and go through the questions again. I had the settings set so that every student's questions were shuffled and even the answer choices were shuffled so that they couldn't just go back and hit "B" instead of "C". I liked the ability for students to try again, especially since this was just a quick formative assessment that was mostly for students to know where they were at, and for me to quickly evaluate who was really struggling. 

9. Answers on Student Device. I have almost 40 students in every class and due to limited space, many students sit far from the board. In Kahoot!, student devices only show colors and symbols, and they have to look up to the board to see the answer choices. There are always complaints about students not being able to see the board or choosing the wrong answer because they couldn't see the answer choices. With Quizzizz, the answer choices also show up on the student device. Hallelujah! 

10. Quick and Easy Formative Assessment. Overall I really liked Quizzizz and will use it again. Grading takes a lot of time, and the ability to immediately know where a student is at in their understanding is rare, and nearly impossible in a class of forty students. This, although it has it's flaws and isn't a perfect assessment measure, is a very quick and easy way to get a decent gauge for where your students are at. 

Have you tried Quizzizz? Is there another platform I should try?