Duck, Duck, Radian....

This is how my brain works.  For some reason, I was thinking, kids these days don't know how to play Duck, Duck, Goose.  I know this from our mission trip a couple summers ago.  Then, I jumped right to - Duck, Duck, Radians.  We could practice going around the unit circle counting off in radians and if you are wrong (either on purpose or by accident, then you get chased by that person).  I thought, great idea if I say so myself.  So, we tried it.  We have lunch during a block period and come back for 20 minutes after lunch - so this would be perfect for 2 activities:

The other part of this is my Garland Unit Circle:

We had a lot of fun making it and it looks beautiful.  However, every day I would come in and some part would be falling down.  Last year it stayed up for the whole half term.  We haven't even had heat or humidity yet and it kept coming undone.  After April vacation, I came in and the entire circle was done, so I said, forget it and took it down but I didn't want to waste my beautiful laminated pieces.  I thought it might be fun to give the pieces to the kids and have a little competition to see which team could complete it the quickest.

So, these were my two activities for 20 minutes after lunch.  One half of the class would do the unit circle.  I put the garland on the ground outside and let them go.  They had all the pieces - 3 for each spot - the coordinates, the radian measure and the degree measure and they had to organize themselves and work together to complete it.  I have two classes with two teams each.  Their times:

1 minute 52 seconds      1 minute 26 seconds   1 minutes 34 seconds and 1 minute 24 seconds!

They finished it easily.

The Duck, Duck, Radian game, not so much.  They could barely get passed pi/2.  They understood the game and had fun with it, but it would be more interesting if they knew their radians better. 

Duck, Duck Radian Game: (the ground was too yucky to sit on)

A completed unit circle

Action shot of the winning team:

Graphing in the palm of your hand

Go ahead.  Take a look at your right palm.  What do you see?  What do you notice?

Do you see your life line, the one that kind of surrounds your thumb?  Do you see 2 more prominent lines?  If not, maybe squish your hand a little bit and see if you can find 3 creases.  Do these look like any kinds of graphs we are learning?

I went to a session at NCTMBoston called Alg 1 Common Core: This is How We Do It!  It was presented by Ms. Michelle Jackson and Ms. Karen Rivers from Arkansas.  They came up with this activity and I tried it. 

It was perfect timing because we were just working on comparing linear, exponential, and quadratic graphs and there you have it, right in the palm of your hand.  We drew on our hand, traced it onto patty paper, came up with 4 points on each line, entered the data into our calculator, performed some regressions and voila - an equation for each function!  We all thought it was pretty cool!  I recommend it. 

I did it in our 20 minutes after lunch period but that was too short.  I would recommend at least 30 minutes.  

Tiny Table

Two summers ago I saved a small table on the side of the road from the garbage man.  My husband sanded the corners.  I painted it, found some cool saying on Pinterest and modpodged those onto it and a station for my classroom was born.  My neighbor was throwing two cute Ikea chairs away, so I added those to it.  I had two chairs from home.

It is my students favorite place to work.  Whenever we go to classroom, they fight to get to the Tiny Table.  Wish I could have more. 

Getting ready for Estimation Station

I have a small math class of 10 students learning a mix of Algebra 1 and 2.  We have been doing Estimation180 every day so far of the school year.  At first, the students were wondering why we were doing this.  Then, they were getting really good at it.  They like the ones that relate back to one we have already done and know the answer to so we can make a better prediction. 

I thought it would be fun to do our own Estimation Station towards the end of the school year.  I saw on Twitter or Facebook, "Are you counting down to the end of the school year or preparing for the big finale?"  So, I am trying to think of it as a grand finale.

I wanted the kids to take some ownership and come up with 3 stations we could do during our lunch block this Friday.  We can have students in 1st and 2nd lunch write their predictions on a piece of paper.  They brainstormed a bit but we didn't have anything all of us could agree on, so I mentioned something I saw on the internet.  What about :

"How many rubber bands does it take to make a watermelon explode?" 

They were all interested, diving into it and we are going to do it.

But, I wanted two more ideas.  Anything after that seemed boring.  I suggested having an ear of corn and asking how many kernels = lame. 

We thought about candy and came up with not just "how many pieces of candy are in the jar?", but we are going to do "How many yellow and purple skittles are in the jar?" 

And, the last one will be a 2 liter of Coke and a plastic cup.  We will put a little less than half of the Coke in the cup (which will have a line marked on it) and ask "How many cups can we fill to the line?" 

They wanted prizes.  They are thinking about collecting money for a Dunkin Donuts gift card on the watermelon one.  The Skittles jar would be that prize.  Not sure what we are doing for the soda - maybe they win the soda?

Once we had our 3 stations, we brainstormed materials.  We are going to set up outside on picnic tables and will use plastic tableclothes, papers and pens for the guesses, 3 containers for the guesses. 

For the watermelon station, we need one watermelon, lots of rubber bands.

For skittles, we need skittles and a jar.

For soda, we need cups and soda.

I reached out to a science teacher to see if we could borrow goggles and ponchos or aprons, so we will take a field trip downstairs tomorrow to get those.

I emailed our TV/Film teacher to see if he might be available and interested to videotape it for us.  He came and visited the class on Friday to discuss what we were going to do.  He is going to try and get some video of my students asking the other students what their guesses are.  Then, we will set up for the watermelon.  He needs to figure out how to set up the cameras to get different angles.  He also needs to figure out how to keep his equipment clean.

Tomorrow in class, after we visit the science teacher, we will make a few posters to advertise it to the school so they know about it at lunch time.  And, then we need to make individual signs for each station.  We will also assign who will be working at each station. 

I need to talk to the custodian and give him fair warning.  It really does explode if you watch the videos online and we will clean it up, but I don't think he will be happy if he is surprised.

And, now I am off to order the rubber bands.  I am predicting it is going to take a lot, so I will order from Amazon. 

The kids are excited and invested in it.  It is going to be our first HOT week at school so it will be good to have something to focus on.

My plan for after the stations is to have the students total each of the station's results and we will draw some conclusions, maybe make some graphs, not sure.

Check back next week for Watermelon updates!

Do teachers make good students?

This has been sitting with me since I was at a presentation at #NCTMBoston. 

My mom was a nurse and she always said doctors and nurses make the worst patients.

I wonder if that is true about teachers - are they the worst students?

I felt like it at #NCTMBoston as I sat at my first presentation surrounded by a room full of people, big papers hanging around the room waiting to be written on, two presenters, and a powerpoint.  I had my laptop, my cellphone, and my old fashioned notebook.  I took notes as I tried to concentrate on what they were saying and showing in their powerpoint, speaking about a lot of great activities.  I didn't want to miss anything.  I was trying to take it all in. 

But, I was on twitter.  I was checking on #NCTMBoston to see what other people might be listening to - was I missing anything, was there a better presentation happening at the same time.  Switch to phone mode, snap a picture of the powerpoint slide for later, write it in my notes (look at photo).  Switch to twitter to tweet out a quote from the presenter.  Back to taking notes. Switch back to twitter to see that someone from #MTBoS was in the same room.  Look around to see if I could find her, I can't.

I am normally a focused person.  In high school, I was a focused learner although the only distraction we had back then was doodling in the notebook and we got in trouble for that.

I was so distracted at the presentations, trying to take it all in, process it, not miss anything in my room or in any of the other rooms at the conference.  It was a good energy though, but after a few presentations, it gets tiring. 

The other thing that happened was when I was sitting at one presentation that wasn't that interesting.  Guess what?  I can get up and leave.  I see that my friend has texted me that she is in a better one.  I can go to where she is.

What if our students could just leave during our lessons if they weren't interested.  Yes, I would be insulted. 

I don't know if all these happenings were making me a good student or a bad student but rather just a different student with all the technology and trying to use them as tools to my benefit. 

Trig Graphing Openers

We returned from spring break yesterday with me being fresh off from the NCTM Boston conference.  I went through the links people added online and got even more ideas.

I put some of these together to open our first class back to Trig Graphing.  Before vacation, the kids were introduced to graphing all 6 trig functions.  They are pretty good with sin and cos, need to learn what the A does in tangent and cotangent, and need more practice with sec and cos. 

They were already taught all the vocabulary too.  So, let's jog those memories and get them thinking. 

I started with this Which One Doesn't Belong and Why.  Check out the link here: WODB  I got the chance to meet the author of the book Christopher Danielson while at NCTM and working the MTBoS booth.  Teachers are collaborating to make the website fill up with ideas.

Then, I found the multiple choice questions on one of the presentations:

And, next was the most fun.  It was partner graphing exercise found in a presentation.  Here is what I told them.  They had some discussion who would graph first.  They were unsure which might be the lesser evil.

And, this was the first equation:

They struggled a bit getting used to trying to put it in words and it took a little while but overall, they did well. 

I had one student explain to me how to draw it while I was at the board.  It was impressive.  He told me to draw the x and y axis.  Then, draw a dotted midline at y=3.  Draw a max line at y=5. Draw a min line at y=1.  Then, he told me to write the x values in increments of pi/2.  Then, he just told me to plot points.  Plot (pi/2, 5) etc.  I asked him if he had done it that well with his partner and the partner shook his head no.  

So, then it was time to switch and the groans came....

We weren't too familiar with cotangent.  They were thinking more of the tangent parent and transforming the point (0,0).  Oops.  But, they got close.  They didn't know what the 2 might do.  They knew in sin and cos it would change the amplitude to 2 but what does it do here?  Ah, that lead us into our next activity on graphing tan and cot and figuring out what that A value does.  They saw a need for it!

These were just our openers but they were a really great welcome back from vacation.  I enjoyed them.  They were some great discussions.

What I learned from working the MTBoS Booth

I am officially on school vacation and just back from NCTM, but here I am on Sunday morning at 7 am, typing from my bed because I have so many great things floating in my head I need to get down.

Before I started typing, I was curious to see if anyone new may have visited my blog since running into me at the booth.  Here's what I found: (Yeah and thank you!)

#1 as in Number 1! Not hashtag 1
#1: MTBos is amazing!  If you have come to read this, you probably know what that is but briefly it stands for MathTwitterBlogosphere.  You can read more here.  Follow them on Twitter @ExploreMTBoS.  It is math people who tweet and/or blog and love sharing their ideas on activities, education, classroom management, decorations, notebooks, etc.  It is an amazing spiderweb of connections!

#2: The booth was more powerful than I can imagine.  Thank you to Tina @crstn85 (author of Nix the Tricks) and blog: Drawing on Math and Justin Lanier @j_lanier (one of the authors of Math Munch - an online math magazine).  They envisioned this idea to spread the word about MTBoS and all we do and it worked!  When planning to come to NCTM, I poured over the program, reading all the great presentations I wanted to attend and then I went to the google doc to sign up to work at the booth.  I didn't want to miss any of the presentations but I did want to get to the booth too.  Well, after being at the booth the first day, I quickly learned the booth was the better spot to be.  It was a wealth of amazingness!  It was getting to meet all the tweeps I follow and admire, expanding my twitterverse with more awesome people I should follow and encouraging new people to join MTBoS so we can get even better!  What an opportunity!  Thank you Tina and Justin!

#3: The Tweeps: Besides meeting Tina, there are more twitter people I got to meet and speak with.  (I might miss a few, I apologize in advance.) 

Alex @alexoverwijk with his website slamdunkmath.  Alex was the first speaker I heard bright and early on Thursday morning.  He was speaking about activities and how he teaches using them, not just plugging an activities into a direct teaching lesson or opening with them, but actually the activity is the lesson for as long as it takes.  This is what I was doing in one of my small classes but have recently fallen into the worksheet/skills trap again, so it was a reminder and a fresh wealth of ideas.  Alex is a MTBoS person so I got to introduce myself to him when he came to the booth.  What an amazing guy.  I did not know he is the World Record Holder for the free hand drawing of a circle.  It has literally taken him around the world.  It is so cool.  I am a pretty good circle drawer myself and it often impresses my student, but now I can say I know Alex and I will show them his video.  Alex is such an interesting person and this comes across in that one minute video that went viral 8 years ago. 

In my conversation with Alex, another man joined us: RebelMaster @nicholasjkurian came up to speak and the conversation went on about circles.  I didn't know Nicholas, but now I am following him. 

Then, there is Denis Sheeran @MathEdisonHSNJ, we were assigned to work with each at the booth.  He is a math coach from NJ and a real sales person, he was talking up a storm and getting everyone who walked my interested in MTBoS.  The booth was projecting tweetdeck onto a screen.  I had heard of it as being helpful during chat sessions but never really knew what it was.  It had 4 columns on the screen following #MTBoS, #NCTM, notifications for @ExploreMTBoS and one more thing.  Now, I could see the power of this.  At first it seemed overwhelming but as you get more into twitter and chatting and following hashtags, I can see the benefit.  It was fun to be connected that way and see what was happening outside the booth.  Denis explained this all to me.  Thanks Denis. 

Of course, I can't forget Desmos, Mathalicious, and MathForum.  They are math organizations with MTBoS members who had booths at NCTM so we were all connected.  We were "selling" them.  I LOVE Desmos.  (It's a free, online calculator tool.) Can't even describe it, just go check them out at Desmos.com and teacher.desmos.com .  Awesome.  Follow them @desmos and Eli @eluberoff.  The best thing is they listen to you on Twitter.  We wanted to be able to do regression using desmos and they did it.  They have amazing teacher lessons as well.  Now follow @mathalicious and see some really cool classroom computer based activities you can use tomorrow.  There are some free ones I have been using but am so happy we will get the full package next school year.  Check it out: mathalicious.com  And, Check this out: mathforum.org - so cool.  With this follow: Max @maxmathforum and Annie @MFAnnie.  Two wonderful people.  I got to hear Max speak a few years ago at a conference and he led a session on beginning twitter (see more about this below).  He was an awesome teacher then and I started and it has brought so much to me.  I got the chance to thank him in person at the booth.  I heard Annie speak at Ignite and she asked what I thought of the Ignite session.  I admitted it was my first and she shared that there are a lot more online to check out.  So cool, I can't wait!

(Boxing time, gotta take a break, will be back to type more)
Here's me ready for boxing with my Mathalicious shirt on:

One of the women at boxing told me she liked my shirt :)

Back to my tweeps:
Next up is Jasmine @Jaz_Math  I followed her prior to meeting her at the booth on Thursday.  We met up again on Friday at the booth when we decided it was a lot of fun to hang out at the booth as a sort of home base.  She teaches in Burlington, VT (we learned there are a lot of Burlingtons around the country) and my mom's family lives right outside of Burlington VT.  The Red Sox opened up ticket sales to math teachers for the game on Friday night and named it Math Educator Night.  My colleagues and I had three tickets, but one couldn't go, so a ticket opened up.  I put it to Twitter - specifically the MTBoS and Avery @woutgeo might need a ticket, but he already found one, so Jasmine at the booth decided to join us.  What fun.  She had never been to an MLB game so it was fun to show her the ropes.  Kathy @kd5campbell is the colleage that joined us.  What an adventure we had when we thought all 500 math educators were going to be announced on the field!  We ran around to the right field seats only to be told we had to report to home base to then be brought down below into the underneath of Fenway Park with the person really not understanding why we think we should be going on the field.  He finally told us only the math teachers who were award winners were getting on the field.  But, he allow us to take a (really) bad picture in left field, as close as we would get.  It was a fun night! 
(Side note to Lois @lburke - sorry I led you to think we would be on the field.  Hope you weren't as disappointed as we were)

Up next is Hedge @approx_normal.  You see, I think it was two summers ago she started a math meme of a hedgehog sweater from Target.  Some of her math tweeps went and bought the shirt and then took pictures and tweeted them. This happened:  Hedge meme  I wore the Hedge sweater on Thursday and I got a few smiles from afar from people who knew what it was even though I didn't know them.  Sorry, it's a screenshot so you can't see the sweater.  I didn't get to chat with Hedge except for the moment when I was walking down a hall and ran into her and she gave me a hug!
Tina @crstn85 took a selfie with me at the booth:

On Thursday night, we met up with Robin @romathio and Casey @cmmteach along with Heather @Heather_kohn and went to Math Trivia night hosted by Mathalicious and Desmos - so cool.  We were all a trivia team.  We worked well together but alas, we did not win.

On Thursday morning I went to a presentation on complex numbers by Michael @mpershan and Max @maxmathforum.  It was mind blowing.  Just the idea that numbers and really about movement as a way to explain complex numbers.  I will share this for a later blog, but Michael came by the booth on Friday and was sharing a paper with a few of us about how rational and irrational numbers are different types of numbers and need to be treated differently from a man in the 1500s.  It was so cool (and might I say it was in this moment that I realized the geek/nerdom of the whole two days - but I loved it!)

On Friday morning, I got to hear Jen @jensilvermath speak about her proradians - why didn't someone make these things before.  Check them out.  What a great tool to get kids to finally understand and appreciate radians!

Thursday night was the ever secret Shadowcon.  No one really knew what it was about or spoke about it, kind of a really cool secret.  All I knew was I was going to be front row until I realized that was reserved for the live tweeters.  At this point, I realized I had not met Fawn @fawnpnguyen but turns out the seat in front of me was reserved for her!  At the end I introduced myself and she recognized me from my blog - how cool!

I am getting way too long here with my tweeps and there were so many: Bob @bobloch, Anna @Borschtwithanna, Andrew @mr_stadel (from Estimation180 that I use every day in class but I didn't get a chance to catch up with him).  I am sure I am missing a few but it was so great to finally meet you all in person.  I will not being attending TMC15 this year so I will be in #jealousyTMCamp.  Maybe next year!

#4 - I will make the last one because this has gotten way too long and the day is almost done.  I was surprised at how many people aren't on twitter at all or have signed up for it but don't use it or are reluctant to use it.  As I was greeting people as they walked by the booth with "do you tweet or blog" - those were my answers.  I was surprised at how many young people don't use twitter.  When I asked why people might be reluctant, the answer was usually - It's just another thing to add to my day.  But, man, it is too great to ignore.  Some people said they didn't want to use it for their students to follow them.  I explained that yes, whatever they post, their followers will see and it may be students but you don't have to use it that way.  I use it to connect and share with out math teachers.  It's timely and instantaneous! If I need something on quadratics for tomorrow, I throw it out to twitter and something always comes back at me.  If someone wants to collect data, it is a great way to crowd source.  It is also a great way to find out what all the new math books and programs and activities are.  These are some we highlighted at the booth:

• Which One Doesn't Belong - book by Tweep Chris @trianglemancsd and website
• Estimation 180
• Nix the Tricks
• Math Munch
• Desmos and Daily Desmos
• One Good Thing
• Twitter Chats
• and more

If you made it this far, you get an oatmeal, peanut butter chocolate chip cookie that I baked for you today!

More on the conference in the next blog, maybe tomorrow?