I have done the Desmos Art Project for many years. I have done Shrinky Dinks for a few years. This year, I mashed the two together. In the past, I allowed the students to draw and make Shrinky Dinks at the end of the year of any design they wanted. One student who I had last year and this still had her Kermit the Frog with her this year. This year I had them copy their Desmos Art Project onto Shrinky Dink paper and we turned them into key chains.
I have an Accelerated Honors Algebra 2 class and four College Prep Algebra 2 classes. In my accelerated class, I assigned the project in March and it was due in May. They worked on it outside of class and they had to have at least 80 equations from what we worked on this year. In my CP classes, we did the project in class for 5 days at the end of the year as our final project. They were required to use at least 30 equations.
Desmos Art Project for Accelerated Honors Algebra 2 This is just the directions and rubric. I like the CP one better because it has all the desmos slides to help the students and to actually work on their projects so I have it all in one spot. For this class, I then had to share a google doc and they gave me links to their projects.
Desmos Art Project for CP Algebra 2 For this one, I combined a bunch of other teachers' projects to make my own. Thank you to them, including Julie and Leigh.
The Accelerated group did great on their own. There were very few questions along the way. It was done all outside of class.
For the 5 days of in class project for my CP kids, it was the first time I have done it with this level and the first time I did it in class time. I really liked it. I have teacher aides in three of my four classes and I really needed another person to help me get around and help all my students. I felt like we were on the Price Is Right running around to change the prices.
Day 1 was looking at the Desmos Activity and all the requirements. We did many marbleslides throughout the year so students were familiar with restrictions to the domain but needed a reminder. Also, this showed them how to restrict the y values as well. I gave them examples of equations and graphs as reminders all in one spot. They had to add an inequality for shading and an animation along with other requirements. With doing the restrictions, they really learned about the greater than and less than button. That was almost the toughest part. Also using all the types of equations together in the same project, students could really see that they do move the same way. Some students came up with their art work.
Day 2 and 3 were working on getting the equations into Desmos. These were the busiest.
Day 4 was hopefully finishing up and uploading a picture of their final draft and answer reflection questions.
Day 5 was turning their Desmos Art Project into Shrinky Dinks. Each student got a piece of Shrinky Dink paper and I had a bunch of sharpies. They traced them from their computers. I took them all home and cooked them. I bought key rings and they added those.
Tips on cooking:
1.) Let the students take them home and cook them themselves so I didn't have to cook 90.
2.) They cook on a cookie sheet at 320 degrees F for 3 minutes. I tried to put 3 cookie sheets into the oven and the same time but then some of them curled up and would go flat. I decided I could only put one sheet at time and had to use the top rack. That worked much better and they were flat every time. If the students curled up, I gave them another piece to take home and make.
3.) Also, to stop the curling, I put a piece of parchment paper on top and that helped.
Enjoy!
Before cooking:
The before and after the cooking:
