Math and Me in Geometry

I am taking a class and typed this up in a google doc and figured I may as well share it in a blog.

This is made from a Desmos getting to know you activity inspired by Emily Sliman and Anna Scholl.  Thank you!

Math and Me with Desmos in Geometry

What an amazing experience for me to learn about my students.  I was showing our IT person and he asked why I wouldn’t just use Google forms to do this in.  I said I would not know how to do all this in Google forms.  Plus, I wanted to capture pieces, sort of sneak peeks of what we will be doing with Desmos this year in math.  I will walk through a student’s responses to share what I learned.  This is for one of my students:

1. First screen asked to graph how they feel about math.  Desmos allows them to draw on the graph and to type in a response.

2.)  One new ongoing idea that came from Sean at Twitter Math Camp was a Marbleslides challenge.  He created 36 weekly challenges for my classes to try.  I give them a code and they try it on their own.  I will give out prizes to the top 3.  I wanted my Geometry students to try a Marbleslides.  They have to adjust the given equation so that when the ball is launched, it will go through all the stars.

3.)  Step 3 was another marbleslide but they were not given the equation.  Here is what she did:

4.)  WODB: This stands for Which One Doesn’t Belong.  It is a great website collection of different pictures to use in the classroom and the cool thing is there is a reason why each doesn’t belong.  They have to be different from each other but then share qualities with others at times.  I asked the students to explain their thinking.  Interestingly, most students picked the bottom left because it doesn’t have any straight lines.  I like that she chose and defended A.

5.)  I took a class a few summers ago on Growth Mindset with Jo Boaler.  There is a lot of talk on Twitter about are you born as a math person.  I wanted to see where the kids stood.  It seemed to be if I student said they liked math, they put agree.  If they didn’t like it, they put unsure or disagree.  She is in the middle.

6.)  This is another new aspect of Desmos - the card sort.  I love matching and have kids sort things by similarities and differences.  In the “old days”, I used to have to make copies and do a lot of cutting.  Now, I can just use Desmos and re-use it.  Here are some ideas built off of the mindset in slide 5.  There isn’t one correct way to join these but they were fun to see where the students were.  It seems this year more students are finally better with making mistakes.  It is okay to make mistakes.

7.)  I liked to find out what I need to know about them. Here is her response about homework.  

8.)  Next up, I asked what they needed from me.  Some asked me to do more group work or less group work or to not call on them or to have patience.

9.)  I thought this would be a good time to find out if they wanted to be called by a nickname or a different name.

10.)  And, the last one was just for fun.  I think I will compile these because the students did get creative and funny. The slide is made so it shows the students some of their classmates responses.  They were pulling them up on their phone and sharing today.