A blog by a veteran math teacher who tries to learn new things. Most posts are about teaching math and problem-solving, but sometimes, it's just about life.
After Twitter Math Camp, I came home to a blog feed flooded with great stuff...and that's not including the great TMC posts that have been popping up. It took me a few days to go through them all and sort them into favorite files: is it ed tech? Precalc? Misc? Here are some of the ones I loved that were not from TMC (those would be too many to post!)
1. At Math=Love, Sarah used the MTBoS idea from @saravdwerf to make a Welcome sign that I am definitely stealing. And so did @MathByTori. Check out Tori's classroom decorations here.
2. I really like this projectile motion poster from @ScaffoldedMath that can be found here.
It's very pleasing to the eye, and I can see putting it in a google doc and placing text boxes for the answers so that students can type them in after making a copy.
3. I got the text box idea in a google doc from @MrsETeachesMath, blogged here, and I can't wait to try it. See her video below:
4. At Radical4math, see how Christie uses Explain Everything with 3 Act Math Tasks...this is a mash-up of two of my favorite things, which I've blogged about here and here.
5. And lastly, I am definitely going to try @TheAnswerPad from @AmyRoediger, which she blogged about here and I can't believe I haven't heard of yet! It looks great for formative assessment and for capturing student work...and it looks like you can easily broadcast student work to the entire class.
What are some cool things you read about this week?
If you don't follow Richard Byrne, whose blog is Freetech4teachers, you must NOW. I have gotten a lot of great ideas from him, and today he did not disappoint. In this blog, he wrote about Zaption. Zaption is a site where you can take any video and add questions to it to make it interactive. Zaption calls these videos "learning tours". In about 5 minutes, I learned how to add multiple choice and free response questions to videos. Here's the video I watched to learn--so easy, I pinky swear.
I thought, nah, no math, I'm sure...but right when I checked it out, I saw a choice of a rational graph video, which I just taught, so it caught my attention. I had hoped to get to converting to vertex (standard) form of a parabola in my class today. Students had a test, and then they worked on this Desmos activity to introduce them to parabolas. But we did not get as far as completing the square.
Insert Zaption. I searched for a completing the square vertex video, and luckily, the first one I saw had an instructor who does it the same way I do. I was able to add a multiple choice question and two free response questions in a video that was less than 4 minutes. I added it to their homework assignment, and students will have to answer the question before they move on. Twice, I asked them to predict the answer, and then once I asked them to solve a problem on their own after watching the video. Afterward, I can look at the analytics and see their responses and how they did. I am assigning this for homework in addition to a light assignment on what we did get to cover.
Here is the video:
And here are the analytics, though none of my students have done it yet--though I can't wait to see it for myself.
The gallery is quite amazing. They have all different subjects and topics. Try it for yourself. If you do a flipped classroom or a modified flip, I think you will love it.
If you are interested in learning how to use Explain Everything for your flipped classroom, click here.
I totally stole this Headbanz idea from Mary Bourassa, and I took many of the equations from Meg Craig's Speed Dating handout. I had leftover stock card and ribbon from old projects and I used a box cutter to make the slices on either side of the stock card to put in the ribbon. (Note that we do not teach students transformations with both a horizontal stretch/shrink and slide until we get to trig functions.)
My rules: (I have never really played Headbanz, but here's what I did)
1. Once you have the headbanz on (ask someone if it's right side up), you may ask one person a question.
2. The person who answers CANNOT speak! (They can move their arms in the shape of parent functions, for example.)
3. That student now asks you a question in the same way.
4. Each of you moves on to a new person and continues in this fashion until you know the equation.
5. When you think you know the answer, come to me and I will tell you if you are right.
This was really fun to watch. They could ask, do I have a vertical stretch? Then next student, what is the vertical stretch, and that student could show with their fingers. They could not, for example, say, what is the number inside of the function? So they had to use math language like: reflection, horizontal stretch, shrink, translation left, and right.
It was very fun, and the students recommended that I keep the rules the way we did them. However, I definitely would do this DAY 2 instead of day 1 when I taught the lesson because they did not all have time to process the information enough on day 1.
Space Race from Quizlet
The day before I taught transformations, I taught parent functions. For homework, I assigned this Space Race from Quizlet. I told them to work on it for at least 10 minutes and email me a snapshot of their highest score. Kids love it, and they really learn the parent functions better than any other way I have used in the past. I tell them to study the phrases and equations as they are on the page you see when you open the link, because when they click on space race in the upper right hand corner, the graphs or names fly across the screen and they have to type it exactly as they see it...try it! There are high scores, and I give a prize for the student with the highest score in each class. Desmos needs Space Race, am I right??
Notes:
Here are my notes for parent functions (this includes piecewise functions) and then transformations of functions.
And my notes from Transformation of functions...I actually use the Chalkboard font, but here it looks much more playful...not sure why it changed!
Speed dating:
I am going to use this on Monday after we go over homework. (we have a 30 minute period) by lining up desks and having students sit across from each other. I will give them a few minutes a problem and then have one side shift to the left (with the last person coming around to the first desk.) They will first have to check their answer from the last "date" with the new "date," and then they can move on. I will try out the datexx timer I just bought. Did I see that from Julie? or Meg? I love twitter.
Homework and answers:
Who did I get this worksheet from??
Explain Everything Video:
As I said, I didn't think my students had enough time to process, so I made this video on Explain Everything, which I blogged about once here (my first blog ever.) I uploaded it to Google Classroom so they could watch it this weekend if they needed any help. It is NOT perfect...and I don't necessarily recommend that you use it...but I am showing it to show how easy it is to do--you can make a quick video to recap what you did and send it out to students.
My rule for videos (as you can see)--make it once. Don't keep trying to fix what you did or what you said or it will take forever. Just make the correction and move on...unless REALLY wrong...I hope I did not make any mistakes that I didn't fix!
And that's it for transformations 2015. Any other transformation ideas?? Please send them along!
After attending the Anja Greer Conference on Math, Science, and Technology at Phillips Exeter Academy as well asISTE 2014 in Atlanta, I realized that this old dog CAN learn new tricks. My main goal from attending both conferences was learning how to implement technology in teaching high school math. I can't even begin to tell you what I have learned...previously, I thought being technologically savvy meant knowing how to navigate my iPhone and Mac well. Not only did I learn a ton of new things, I began to actually USE my twitter account@lisaqt314, started reading blogs (I start my morning each day reading through blogs on bloglovin.com) and watching tons of free Google webinars on http://www.simplek12.com/. I am inspired daily by what so many of these great teachers (and bakers! yes I follow food blogs, too) do! I have learned so much and decided to just pick one major thing to start with rather than make a list...it will give me more to write about in the future!
Math~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What Explain Everything page looks like on my iPad
One of the best things I learned about at Phillips Exeter is the Explain Everything App. You can check out how to use it here: http://www.morriscooke.com/?p=134. Explain Everything is so easy to use, so intuitive. Using the iPad, I can create a video that explains a math problem. I can write in different colors, draw pictures, and record my voice so students can basically see the problem all over again, any time they want. Here is one video I made that goes over the famous "maximizing-the-area-of-a-three-sided-fence" problem. By the way, I should tell you that when I went to ISTE, I was told NOT to perfect the videos (hard for me to not perfect)...basically do it once and be done with it. Otherwise, it will take too long to create each video. That was the best advice for me because I would have redone this video 12 times before finally uploading it to youtube! And trust me, if I can do this, you can too!!
Now the BEST thing about this is I can use a URL shortener and/or QR code creator (I use the chrome extension goo.gl URL shortener) to create a short link or QR code for the video...and copy it right next to the problem in my notes. (I pre-type my notes with lots of examples and space...I find that gives me a lot more time for questions and discussion). See, here's the codes! So for the more difficult problems, a student can look at the video at home to see me explain it again. Explain Everything is awesome! And so is the google shortener!!!
I know, it's not in the right order of Eat Play Math, but it makes sense to focus on the math first for me!! For the PLAY part, I need something good for the soul...something that makes me just feel great, that is unrelated to work. This could be a great workout, a fun excursion, a class unrelated to math, a fantastic restaurant, an awesome time with the family, or a fun time with friends.
For my first blog, I'm going to talk about a cooking class I took this week with my mother-in-law. It was at Publix Apron's Cooking School. Publix is a grocery store chain in Florida. There are other several cooking classes available if you look online...Wholefoods has them from time to time, as do local culinary schools. This one was so much fun because there were only 5 of us and 2 chefs! I met a food blogger, who also inspired me to get started. Follow Shaina on Take a Bite Out of Boca. I wish I took pictures (there are some on the food blog I just linked you to), and I will for next time. For now, just do something fun that is great for the soul!! It was such good bonding time for my mother-in-law and me, and I learned something and met other people with common interests. So fun!
Eat~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For this portion, I am going to post a recipe that I tried and loved. My family asked for this again this week after I made it last week. I find most (if not all) of my recipes on Pinterest. Follow me on http://www.pinterest.com/lisaqt314/ for the recipes I love as well as tons of math/tech stuff! What I made was Healthy Blackened Chicken Fajitas with Cilantro Lime Cauliflower Rice
A. MAZE. ING. (Yes I know how to spell amazing, ha ha!)
