FYI: Seniors are SO Over School

I know that will be a shocker to many of you, but this is the vibe going around our school. We have another 3 weeks left, so I am giving this assignment to my seniors. Hopefully, it can perk them up, or WAY more important, not bring ME down.

Digital Electronics Boe-Bots

We're ending our year of DE with the Boe-Bot unit. Practically none of my students have experience with putting together things or with programming, so I'm happy with this unit. I'm not much following the PLTW curriculum due to time constraints and interest, but due to a conversation I had with the kids, we're ALL excited about what direction things took.

Last year I had my kids learn to program and use subroutines and then put them to use in running through a unique maze (one per group). This had varying degrees of success. I could have made it better with having more scaffolding and intermittent grades instead of at the very end. Live and learn.

This year, I mentioned the maze idea to my current students, and then, I don't know who, but we mentioned a group choreographed dance with the 7 Boe-Bots (I'm building one, too). We all suddenly got excited, and I scrapped the maze idea and now we keep joking that we MUST. GO. VIRAL. Isn't that all the rage these days. Are you anything if you're not viral on the Internet at least once? Will our lives mean nothing?

I created a short "dance". There are solos. There's a chorus. There's a "wave". There's an entrance and exit. The students have all done the subroutines (12 of them: move forward 1 tile, move forward one rotation, turn right 90 degrees, pivot...., etc). See what I did there? I learned from last year and made those all a grade with a due date. Go me (for now). Now on Tuesday we will code up the choreography and work out the bugs and video tape (is that even the term anymore?) and Hello Bacteria or Virus. Here we come. 

Exam Stress

The AP Calculus AB exam is in a few days, and of course we are hard-core reviewing and mock testing and discussing the whole year in preparation. One of my students asked me to make them inspirational messages, and my first thought was that I would video various teachers around campus rooting for them and post it on Haiku. That didn't happen. Instead, I've been finding funny pictures and writing some goofy message related to studying and/or math and/or testing, etc and sending them out daily. They seem to like this.

But this post is really about how much brain space you use when you are stressed or focusing on things OTHER than the question you are answering on a timed test and then stressing while you are watching the time tick down and knowing you SHOULDN'T be thinking about the "other" thing and then stressing more because you are wasting time and then trying to refocus on the problem and then stressing because it's not IMMEDIATELY on the tip of your brain, and then the whole cycle repeats itself.

Oy! Who hasn't been there. I forgot about this AGAIN, and haven't really had a discussion with my class about it. And I don't know if there is a solution. But here's what brought it to my mind this week.

My class was doing a timed Free Response question, and I gave them 15 minutes, and put the timer on the document camera, so we could gauge our time (I was doing the problem with them). A couple of things you need to know. This year, I checked out TI-nspire calculators to my 22 students. I've also been providing batteries (well, our department has). They absorb and go through the batteries FAST. I've since mentioned that we are out of money, and the students have to buy a fresh pack of batteries before Wednesday for the test. So, back to test day this past week. One student (who I have an up and down history with in terms of attitude) right before the test mentioned that her batteries were out, and could she borrow another TI-nspire for the FRQ in class. Yes.

So the test starts, and I start the timer, and I start taking the test with them. A few minutes into it, I hear this noisiness at that student's table. I look over, and she's transferring the batteries from "my" calculator to her calculator, and then proceeds to use her calculator. Then I start seething and thinking the worst. Then I start not concentrating on the question. Then I start looking at the timer and stressing because I'm not focusing and I'm not making progress on the problem. Then I start cursing her in my mind and thinking about all sorts of reasons she's doing this. Bla bla bla. Then I start thinking about how this is what the students must be feeling when they're in a timed stressful test situation and "WELCOME TO THEIR WORLD".

Anyway, the timer went off. NO I did not finish. I waited to see what the student would do. Would she just hand back my calculator with the bad batteries? Class was ending. She didn't say anything. I didn't want to be too accusatory, but I asked for the calculator back and asked her if it was her dead batteries or mine in there. She mentioned that the glide pad wasn't working on "mine", so that's why she transferred batteries .... (but then she didn't retransfer, hmmmmm).

Long post longer. I need to have a discussion on Monday with (half) my class (others are in the APES exam) (hah! APES .... AP Environmental Science) about stress and brain space and such during a timed test. Any suggestions on what could make me/them/anyone refocus on the problem at hand instead of other non-test brain activity? Thanks in advance.

Sequences & Series

Ahhhhh! It's that time of year when you hear RUMORS of students actually being enrolled in your classes, but you have scattered evidence. If it's not sickness, it's field trips or EOC exams or fill-in-the-blank reasons. Or if they ARE in class, some of them are NOT in class. If you know what I mean.

Welcome to my Precalculus preAP experience. Because of this, I was trying to give this recently-absent child a run down of all things Sequences and Series. I sketched the following roughly on paper (don't I write perdy?), and then decided that it'd would be a great Graphical Organizer for everyone else. And VOILA, guess what early Christmas present they're getting today. THIS.

APCS AP Exam Studying

After a conversation with some 10th graders today: "I wish teachers would teach us HOW to study for exams", I got nervous. In my mind I HAVE done that. I think. Once. For final exams. But apparently, it's not a message that sticks. Or maybe they're so used to being bossed around by us/me, that when they aren't, they think, "woo HOO! Free time! No Homework! Study Shmudy."

So I came up with this assignment for my APCS class (while I'm on a field trip with other students .... no stress here .... only a handful of class days before the AP Exams, but SURE, I'll help chaperon).

Maybe if they have the schedule, they'll be more likely to use it. Don't burst my bubble.

Senioritis

... And I don't mean dear old me!

Our school is relatively new, and so we have our first graduating class this year. We're starting all sorts of new traditions and going through growing pains and figuring out what works and doesn't work (or figuring out that we have to figure it out).

I don't know if it's a function of being such a small public school, or if it's just business as usual, but for most of the year this year our seniors have been:

"UGH! I'm so over it!"
"UGH! I can't WAIT to get out!"
"UGH! This SCHOOOOOOOL!"

Well, I could go on, but you get the picture.

As people with feelings, or maybe I'll just speak for myself, ... as a person with feelings, my first reactions are:

"The NERVE!"
"Don't you know the blood/sweat/tears I put out for you?"
"Do you appreciate NOTHING?!?!?!"
"RUDE!"

I could go on, but again, you probably get the picture.

Then I started to think. This is a natural process. Of course they want to leave. It would be weird if they wanted to stay in HS forever. Also, it's not ALL the seniors, but just a vocal few that phrase things this "in your face" way, and of course I then extrapolate, and it's EVERYONE that HATES us/me/math.

Maybe it's also part of the natural process (or maybe I'm just making myself feel better), that they are anxious about leaving after being here for so long, and they are trying to not get nervous/scared/worried about next year, but instead they're trying to replace it with relief of leaving.

My new inner and outer response the the kidlets is:

"Of course you want to leave. It would be weird if you didn't. You're ready for your next life phase."

(and of course the little voice inside me will still whisper: ruuuuuuuddddddeeeeeeee)

Quick and Easy Visual for Tangents to a Circle

I was helping a student recall that 2 tangents to a circle from the same exterior point are congruent (as segments). Instead of talking it out, we did this. It was a quick and effective way to test out various scenarios. We set it up so we could read the distance from the exterior point to each tangent point.