Last Friday Before the "Fake" 1st Week of School

To relieve my bum's fascination with sitting and surfing on the computer all the time (it's really talented), I went in to school every day this week for a wee bit and unpacked and decided on desk structure (30 kids! Woot!) and stuff. You can see I'm still not done, but I've made headway, and my butt thanks me for actually walking around. You're welcome, bane of my rear.

Here are the unpacked boxes SO FAR:


Here is what I'm trying out. Two students per table. Long rows. No extra room. Oh! and look! More schtuff to put away:


I'm trying to be more organized this year. I tried to put myself on a pen diet last year. NO MORE PEN BUYING. Apparently, my fascination with the show, "Hoarders", .... hmmmm, a little sensitive?


What's this? More hoarding tendencies? And I didn't even buy any pens or stickies this year. Yet.

Funny...

This made me giggle. I don't know if it makes me feel super old or super young or what. I'm FaceBook "friends" with several former students. Most of the time it's okay, but sometimes I have to hide all the posts from a particular ex-student because I don't want to know how much they drank or did other things. That's about 1% of them. The rest are just fun to see grow up and explore and get jobs and live.

Anyway, this student graduated HS about 2007, so maybe he's graduated from college right now and roughly 22 years old. His post was:

Is it just me or is the crap that kids are watching now a days really really suck?? I mean what happened to the good stuff??

Hah! "Kids these days"! Does he feel like an old man?

Update ...

I couldn't let it go, and it kept bothering me for a variety of reasons. So I just sent the following e-mail to the person mentioned in my last post.

DD,

I was just going to let this go, but it's been really bothering me since last Saturday night at the banquet when you made your extremely offensive remark against a person that happens not to be white.

One, I'm saddened that you think it's okay to blurt such stuff out in public (let alone think it), and two, I'm insulted that you think I must be of a like mind. I'm not, and I don't want you to harbor the impression in the future that I think like you apparently do.

***

At least I feel better about taking some action.

Okay, back to math ..... I've heard through the grapevine I may have a class of 30 students. Oooh! Now I know (sadly) that this may seem like a nonevent to others, but in a classroom where I'm to use those long tables as "desks" as opposed to actual desks, it's a tight squeeze. It's going to be a cozy year.

Anatomy of a Racist Encounter

You attend a 3-day, 10th annual event because of your husband. You see people you only see once a year, and some people that you see throughout the year. You have nice conversations about a variety of things with a variety of people. You talk with a 78 year old man, CI, about many things, and a couple of times he makes slightly in-poor-taste remarks about people of different ethnicities. You scrunch up your face to show distaste, and he backtracks and conversation goes on. You think to yourself, well, he's of a "generation".

You are at a final-evening banquet sitting with 3 people you see once a year, one of whom you've had good conversations with for 2 days, let's call him DD. The conversation turns to politics - local Texas small town mostly. There are big drought issues and land issues and two of the locals don't agree with how the city has decided to deal with things, and they start in with, "once you become a politician, it seems you become an expert in everything you know nothing about."

Then the 3rd person, DD, interjects an awful racist remark, "oh, like that ____ ____ ____ ____ over in the White House." The other two don't allude to DD's statement and just keep talking. You're stunned into shocked silence and not quick on your feet and still processing the fact that this person has literally let his racism hang out in public airing just like that. The conversation has continued. You're still stunned and really uncomfortable and want to say something, but don't know how or what or with what tone. You're angry with him, and you're angry with yourself for staying quiet. Isn't that the same as pretending what he said was okay? Doesn't that give him another vote of confidence that other people think like he does? You excuse yourself and don't return to the table. The evening ends.

And here's the thing. Now you have one more chink in your armor of trusting that people that you meet and that seem nice really ARE nice. That most everyone you meet that SEEMS human judges others on their character first/mostly and not on their race/sexual orientation/wage-earning. And you wonder when it will come out when meeting new people or talking with people you've known for a while. And what about the other 2 people at the table? Did they think the same way as DD because they didn't say anything? Do I have to wonder about them? Or were they flabbergasted like I was and are wondering the same about me?

And mostly you're still upset with yourself for letting it slide at the time and not knowing the right thing to say and the right tone, so that the person knows that he's offensive, and it is not okay and beneath his humanity. You don't think you can change his views, but you think that you should speak up. You keep thinking about it. You hope you come up with a phrase or two that will be on the tip of your tongue next time. But hopefully there won't be a next time.

Fun and Apparently Free

One of my goals ("someday") is to be fluent enough in at least 2 languages (ideally tons, but I could start with two). To that end, I dabble here and there and practice. I downloaded (when they were still free AGES ago) the "Learning Spanish Like Crazy" and "Learning Italian Like Crazy" CDs and listen to them in my car. I like both, and I'm pleased with the Spanish one because it's Latin American Spanish which is more relevant for me.

Apparently, some of my students think I know 5 or 6 languages (or maybe they're just humoring me) because sometimes I'll count in Japanese or say a word in German or such just to break things up. If they ask, I tell them how many I've "learned" in the past (in order: English, Farsi, German, Russian, Spanish, French, Japanese, Italian), and I also tell them how many I'm fluent in now (1). Go English!

Let's not fool anyone here. Maybe there's some segment of my brain that remembers these things, but those foreign words/phrases are not making that trip to my mouth. Anyway, as I was surfing the web today and went to the BBC site, I found THIS! Holy cow. There are videos and little dialogs and tests and all sorts of fun things.

I browsed through the French test, and got one wrong, and they linked me to these possible sites. I liked the Ma France one. Oh oh! more things to distract me from doing work.

Utopia....

You know how certain segments of society are all, "oh no, I need to lose weight. I need to get fit. I need to look more attractive. I feel bad about myself because I'm not thin/pretty/hot/young like people I see on TV/ads/movies." (no names mentioned)

We need a society where the stress is more, "oh no, I need to be more ethical. I need to be a nicer person. I need to do more good for the world. I feel bad about myself because I'm not nice/ethical/good-natured."

Or reverse, instead of, "I'm hot spit because I'm attractive." This needs to be more, "I feel GREAT about me because I'm basically a good person."

Where's THAT parallel universe?

Nervous.....

In the course of making and filling out my school calendar for next year and planning for various classes, I came across these 3 scary months on some official calendars:

March:


April:


May:


Notice the 5 bazillion weeks of state testing. Now of course our state is in the process of switching over from one test to the other, but that just means that we'll have to administer both for the next few years.

I also counted up the actual teaching days I get, and tried to discount for these weeks and finals weeks and other weeks that seem to fall away, and I REALLY hope I'm wrong, but I counted about 140 or so actual days of teaching.

Must go cry now.

"Working"....

Okay, so I'm SLOWLY working through my to do list:



But this is HEAVILY sprinkled with the fun things I've done.

My coffee cup from a paint-your-own pottery place. LOVE the 20 oz. cups:


My agenda book for next year. I found a ton of pictures and sayings and taped them on the covers. Now I just have to make all the calendars for the back section, and I'll be ready to roll.

FRONT:




BACK:


This agenda book idea worked really well last year, and then towards the end of the year, I looked at another person's book, and she had a running numbered list of things she had to accomplish then crossed out(instead of just higglety pigglety around all pages). I started doing that, and loved it.

TI-nspire Start Up Worksheet

I've just created a "getting to know you" sheet for my students for the TI-nspire. Again, we'll just be using it for in-class explorations, and I don't expect students to rush out to buy them.

A really nice person sent me a "Scavenger Hunt", and I used that as my inspiration. Of course now that I go through my e-mail to thank her in "person", I can't find the message, so a PUBLIC THANKS to you.

My next goals are to create a teacher sheet for the other math teachers at my school to show them where the resources are, and IF I HAVE TIME (and it seems to be quickly dwindling), I want to create actual activity sheets.

You can find this sheet here. If the graphics mess up, then I'm guessing you know how to adjust them. Preview:

Summer Math Packet Update...

Back in mid June before I went to my workshop I sent out 2 sets of e-mail for summer math work - one to my rising precalculus students, and one to my rising geometry students. I'm still working out how I'll grade these or assess these, since this was a last minute decision, and basically given out via e-mail without any warning to the students to watch for e-mail (long story).

I'm not sure of the fairness in holding them accountable for this work since some may not even get it. What I'm leaning towards is for THIS SUMMER (as opposed to next because I'm sure this will now be a given) is to either give them extra points on the homework portion of their semester grade, or to create an extra quiz grade and assess it that way, and for the students that did not do it, they do not get the quiz opportunity.

Here's my precalculus e-mail:

You can finally breathe a sigh of relief, your summer math work has arrived. You're going to be learning a ton of cool things in precalculus next year, and there are a few things I want you to refresh your memory on: function notation, right triangle trigonometry, and special right triangles.

You're welcome to do these things in any order and at any time over the summer, but I highly recommend spreading the wealth out and not cramming it into one or two sessions. I also recommend maybe ALSO looking at the information and doing the practice once every few weeks, so it has time to soak in and get trapped in your brain cells.

Here are some suggested sites for each of the three topics. Note that they may not be the best for how you learn, so you're welcome to Google search on any of the purple topics on your own. You know if you're successful if you can complete all of the "goals" with great accuracy. By mid July, I will send you some online quizzes for each of these topics. Your job is to take the quizzes and score 80% or better. You can take various versions of the quiz as many times as you like.

Please send me e-mail once you've received this e-mail, and you can e-mail me any time during the summer.

function notation video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj3Aqov52TY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoDHSqQZuiw&feature=related
GOALS:
1. be able to evaluate functions presented in function notation for numerical inputs (i.e. find g(7) if g(x) = 5x^3 - 9x + 1)
2. be able to evaluate functions presented in function notation for any expression input (i.e. find h(x^2+1) if h(x) = 4x - 3x^2)
3. be able to find the input that satisfies the output (i.e. find x such that f(x) = 10 if f(x) = 2x^3 - 6)

sine cosine tangent:
http://www.mathsisfun.com/sine-cosine-tangent.html
http://www.mathwarehouse.com/trigonometry/sine-cosine-tangent.html
http://www.algebralab.org/lessons/lesson.aspx?file=trigonometry_trigsincostan.xml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S35Ht4imhs
GOALS:
1. given any right triangle and a designated acute angle in that triangle, you can set up equations for sine, cosine, and tangent
2. you can pronounce "sin" accurately
3. on any right triangle with angle information given and one side length given, you can use trig to find the remaining 2 side lengths
4. on any right triangle with side lengths given, you can find the remaining angles of the triangle

special right triangles:
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Special-Right-Triangles.topicArticleId-18851,articleId-18821.html
www.mente.elac.org/presentations/spec_tri.pps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVTtSE5nv7c
GOALS:
1. you can recognize 30-60-90 triangles and 45-45-90 triangles
2. you can quickly place the ratios of sides around either
3. you can find all exact side lengths of a special right triangle given any side

For geometry I decided to make it two-fold: actual math practice, and a project.

Here's the e-mail:

Hello Mathies,

Here is your summer geometry work with instructions included in the document. I'd recommend downloading the attachment instead of just viewing so that the formatting doesn't go all crazy on you. Have fun, and look for another e-mail from me some time in July (as mentioned in the attachment).

Please send me e-mail if you have any questions.

Big Hugs and Big Math,

Ms. D

(here's part of the attachment):

Hello Future Geometry Kidlets,

There are 2 parts to your summer math work (you’re welcome).


PART 1:
Choose one of the following projects to complete. These are due the first day of class, and we’ll share out. I will do the project also and share my results.


PROJECT 1:
1. Go to this link: http://www.district87.org/staff/powelln/Geometry/Projects/GoldenRatio/GRProject.htm
2. Click on various parts to see what’s what.
3. If you didn’t already, click on the “learn about pantographs” link under the “CONSTRUCTIONS” part of that page (http://www.ies.co.jp/math/java/geo/panta/panta.html). Play around with the applet on the bottom.
4. Make your own real life pantograph. Figure out how much larger you make your drawing (give me a ratio and explain how you found it). You can be creative with the objects you use. You don’t have to spend a ton (any?) money. Extra points if you can do this for free.


PROJECT 2:
1. Go to this link: http://www.district87.org/staff/powelln/stringart/index.html
2. Click on the various links to explore “string art”.
3. Explore this YouTube video: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPn8obkZyPI) and possibly others shown on that page.
4. Create your own string art. Again, you can be creative with the objects you use. You don’t have to spend a ton (any?) money. Extra points if you can do this for free.


PROJECT 3:
1. Go to this link: http://www.district87.org/staff/powelln/Geometry/Projects/OrigamiMobiles/OrigamiMobiles2007.htm
2. Click on the various links to explore “origami mobiles”.
3. Create your own origami mobile. You must have at least 6 different origami pieces. Your mobile must balance.
4. Again, be creative with the objects you use. You don’t have to buy origami paper. Extra points if you can do this for free with objects found around the house.



PART 2:
Complete the following problems. You must show all your work. I will send an answer key soon for you to check your work. I will also send a few online quizzes some time in July to make sure you understand the concepts. You can take the quizzes as many times as you want, but you must ultimately score at least an 80%.

Now the chickens come home to roost, or the fat hits the frying pan, or whatever.... I'm off to make the quiz assessments on proprofs.com. And I will also do all 3 projects for fun and to see what the various cool math aspects are.

Trips Galore...

I'm finally home after basically 3.5 weeks away: 2 weeks for the Digital Electronics training, and 1.5 weeks for visiting family old and new friends.

POed graciously agreed to meet me while I was in NYC, and we had a walking and talking marathon. She suggested tons of great places to visit: the highline park, riverside park, yotel, gershwin hotel, and YES, the best pizza ever - at Ray's way down south. You know it's a great pizza place when you ask for fresh garlic as a topping, and they pile 2 heaping tablespoons full on top. My husband will be surprised that even I had to scrape some off. I'm very impressed with POed, though, she was not such a sissy and finished all her garlic topping like a champ.

Love her, by the way - she's smart, friendly, caring, and fun to trade war stories with. Here are some pictures from NYC.

Sculpture along Riverside Park:


Another Riverside Park sculpture .... inside was basically living quarters - bed, chair, toilet, ....:


Yotel. This was a robot in the entryway and you could command it to store your baggage in these little drawers. How cool is that?


Highline Park, built along old railroad tracks:


View from Highline Park. There's amphitheater type seating with a Plexiglas window in front where you can watch the street action:


Sculpture from one of the many parks we passed on our trek:

Workshop Thoughts

Okay, it's Wednesday, and Friday is the last day of our 2 week workshop. Here are random teaching thoughts that have floated around in my head while it's being crammed with electronic information:

1. Hey workshop participant, you don't have to voice every thought that passes through your brain. ALL the way through our class from 8am - 5pm.

2. Linking new information to a good story or visual is a great latch. For example, on certain IC chips (details not relevant to the story), there are two inputs that serve a certain purpose. If they're "activated" they basically take over in a certain way. So our cool teacher spun this tale about Zeus and Hades and said that the gods don't "follow the clock", so when they wake up, whatever they want goes, and Zeus is "higher" so things change to 1 whenever he wakes up, and Hades is "lower", so things change to 0 whenever he wakes up. They're gods, and do what they want. When they go back to sleep, the IC chip pattern follows the clock again. So now whenever I come across these certain "pins" in my homework, DING, I think back to Zeus and Hades, and the information of how to proceed is immediately available to my head.

3. Perseverance is key. My table mate and I were pushing through and seeming to struggle with breadboards for the LONGEST time. Note: we finally and successfully completed the assignment, but the thing that sticks in my mind is somewhere after 4 days, one of the teachers said, "well, you know, you can use this OTHER automated breadboard and don't have to continue to fiddle with these ones". What I HEARD was, "hey, dummy, now that you can't handle the hard stuff, here's the baby version that may be more your speed." Well, that put additional light under my butt and I refused and was ultimately successful and proud of myself, versus if I gave up and settled for the easy way out. Also note to self, don't make the same suggestions of any sort to my students. DO mention that overcoming something hard will make you better.

4. pandora.com ROCKS .... especially at 12:30am when you're finishing your homework, and yes, I'm late to the game.

5. I love meeting new people and hearing various cool things about their lives or experiences and occasionally meeting new friends and laughing so hard I have to pee.

Ignorant vs Stupid

And not that you'd call anyone "stupid".

Maybe I haven't mentioned it more than 5 baZILLION times, but I'm SO excited to be at a 2 week training for "Digital Electronics" in the PLTW curriculum. I've been through 3 actual days of class time now (Thursday at 11pm), and it's intense but loads of fun.

Let's just throw around some terms that I've bantered about and slowly become acquainted with in the last few days: ohm, resistor, digital logic board, capacitor, analog, digital, light emitting diode, power source, switch, TTL, Boolean algebra, sequential logic, SOL, AOI, DE, valence shell, soldering, tinning, oscillator circuit, frequency, duty cycle (tee hee), time high, time low (hee and hee), breadboard, .....

If I could go back in time and read those words (say before last Sunday), you'd see this glazed look over my eyes combined with a fight or flight response of, "ackh! others know more than me, and I should know this, and they're saying it's obvious and oh no, let's switch the subject..."

Now, peshaw! I'm totally going to be throwing those words out at my next math party and be the hit of the evening, right?

But anyway, a typical day so far has been: get up at 4:30am in a panic because I didn't finish the homework from the last class(es). Do as much as I can before I hit the gym at 6am. Shower and have breakfast. Class from 8am - 5ish pm (with lunch). Dinner and unwinding for a couple of hours. Homework until 11:30pm until I crash, and repeat all over again the next day.

Anyway, tonight I had to create a "Voting Machine" logically on paper and in a simulation program before I took it to actual DLB to work. (so if you know what I'm talking about great; if not, you're me 4 days ago). One of the instructors was down in the common room helping us (8pm - 9:30pm). I was apparently doing something TOTALLY ridiculous on the simulation program. Sure, the theory I have down pat; it's logic and math. My paper version was all correct. The electronics .... (wait for it), I'm "ignorant on" at this point. Well, sheesh, that's why I'm here, to learn. I'm not stupid .... (obnoxious and anonymous brag alert) ... I have 4 math/applied math degrees .... (end of alert). But I am IGNORANT about electronics. Please don't treat me as if I'm stupid. Just explain it to me and answer my actual questions so that I can internalize and process the information (shout out to my instructor). ... To give him credit, in the end, I finally understood the issue (I think) .... hint: for a circuit to work that has an LED in it you have to ..... okay, you don't care.

The point is, "note to self", don't treat my students as stupid, and be sensitive about when you may be making them feel stupid when really they're just ignorant on the current topics. AND be very careful to answer the questions they ask, not the ones you think they're asking with all your filters of assumptions on what they get or don't get or can get or can't get.

Okay, what am I doing blogging when I have homework to do .....

Fun Problems

A few days ago, Allison posted a problem you could really sink your teeth into and enjoy the puzzle of it all. It reminded me that it's been a while since I did this sort of brain challenge type problem just for the heck of it. Many years ago, I came across this problem:

Consider a square cake that's frosted on the top and sides. How do you cut it into 5 pieces so that everyone gets the same amount of cake AND the same amount of frosting? You must serve the whole cake. (be able to prove why it works) (added bonus: what if it's a rectangular cake?)

Now as a selfish person, I'm wondering if anyone has links to other cool such problems that make you think and tinker for a longer while than usual. Share! Share!

Fun Crafts

We're soon visiting my husband's brother's wife's sister's two little girls, and I wanted to make some knitted or crocheted toys for them. I didn't have a ton of time, and I like really fast projects, so I altered and eyeballed and shrunk down visually from a doll pattern and came up with these two beauties that are about 3 to 4 inches tall. Woot Woo!

The alien baby dolls. Or maybe they can be the Einstein Dolls and the girls can play pretend relativity theory. I still have bits and pieces of 2 weeks left, so maybe I'll make dogs and leashes and beakers and microscopes and such to go with them.

Education Experts

Did you ever think up this really cool idea for one of your lessons. You were really excited! This was going to be so clear and fun and educational and work perfectly. Of course, you spent time working out the details and thinking through all the THEORETICAL issues that could come up. You launched it.

Most often it didn't work as planned. Various things came up. REALITY set in, and you had to think on your feet. You fixed what you could. If it seemed MORE usable than not, you made notes and adjustments for next time. For me, it usually takes about 3 times through before I work out *most* of the bugs.

But the deal is, it really didn't work as you had planned. But being a teacher, and as important, just being one of you, and knowing you're the expert of your classroom you could adjust quickly and on the fly. And no one has to throw it back in your face and say, "ha! you messed up! double ha!"

But I want to get back to the "didn't work as you had theoretically planned" business. I'm thinking that this is what happened and is happening with all the uppy ups telling us how to teach and what to teach and shoving state assessments down our throats and strategic compensation and whatnot. Because theoretically, that sounds so true and good and seems to make sense: hold people accountable. Hold teachers accountable. Hold students accountable. What could go wrong? People will rise up to the high level of expectation and perform better.

Hah! Reality could go wrong, apparently. Theory is all well and good, but reality is what you have to deal with in the end. And they're such a huge bureaucracy, and they have a "ton more students and classrooms", that how long does it take to adjust their strategy? And how easy/hard is it to admit you've made a mistake when so many people are watching you.

Or maybe I have it all wrong, and "they" are still sitting "up there" saying, "it's all the teachers' faults. If only they'd be better and do what we ask, we'd fix education! A pox on the teachers. Slackers the lot of them. And they get the summers off!"

Stories and Pictures

I'm going to a 2-week Digital Electronics workshop soon, and since I didn't want to show up with no remembrance of anything electricity, I thought I'd better brush up. I didn't want my "brushing" to be too painful, so I found this book to help me, "The Manga Guide to Electricity".

Super cheesy, right? I'm not a "manga" person at all, but I figured it would be a "fun" (?) way to review.

Well, what do you know. It works! I think part of the effectiveness, for me anyway, is that when one of the characters is explaining various aspects of electricity, he links it to a picture and/or something I know. Now later on in the book when that aspect is referred back to, I conjure up that picture in my head and can see the story line and know what he's talking about. I can keep things straight instead of just plowing through various equations and thinking, now what equaled what?

Then I got to thinking, wouldn't it be fun/interesting (possible?) to have a running storyline (or a few) in, say, geometry. Then when you're teaching a new topic, there's pictures the kids can refer back to or some link that connects it to what they know. I guess ideally it shouldn't just be random things because maybe that adds to the memory retrieval problem.

What would it look like? Would they each develop their own story, sort of like that "here's a sentence and let's pass it around and everyone add another sentence and let's create a story" type of deal. Oh, maybe that's it. Every night someone new would be responsible for adding to the story. We could have an online geometry story that would be a work in progress all year. The kids could go back to it whenever they wanted to review.

Logistics: Would each class have their own story? Would we have one total? What if a kid flakes and doesn't do their part, how is that remediated? Blog? GoogleDoc? Other? Homework grade? Extra quiz grade? No grade? How many times a year will a student have to add to the story? Is there a way where they can sign up for a schedule?

It's just crazy enough for me to want to try it next year.

Summer Math Packet

Our math department decided to give summer math work for students, the same way they get summer reading. I'm of mixed minds about this, but I'm doing it anyway. And since I came late to the game (try LAST 3 DAYS OF SCHOOL) (don't ask) (and maybe I would do it in this manner anyway), I'm going to make it more of an online "packet". My idea is to pick some topics I want them to review or refresh their memories on using YouTube or other online links. Then I'll use my proprofs account to quiz them.

I don't know if I'll have them try various quizzes until they reach a certain score or what. I also don't know how they'll be held accountable come school time. I'm batting these ideas around in my head: bonus points, homework passes, quiz the first week or 2 of school, homework grade,...

I will be doing this for rising geometry students and rising precalculus students. I'm also thinking of having various packets sent out and "due" every 2 or 3 weeks, so they don't leave it all to the end .... incentive for them to do it in a timely manner? More "points"?

Precalculus Topics: right triangle trig, special triangles, function notation, ... any other suggestions?

Geometry Topics: solving equations, graphing lines, factoring, working with fractions, ... any other suggestions?

Soooooo, I'd better get my butt in gear and actually send out the "packet" information.

Too Cool Not To Share...

As I was culling through my work e-mail today in my quest of cleaning EVERYTHING up this summer, I came across one from our excellent librarian. She shared this link. Holy Cow! It's mesmerizing, and I want to watch it over and over to see how many patterns emerge. Also, I'm sure there's math that's accessible to high school students as to when they "converge" or "meet up" or how many times they meet up. Or we could all just watch over and over again like little 2-year-olds and their movies.

Kids' Chairs

Here are some pictures of my students' cardboard chairs. They are in various stages of completion and of success. We only had time to finish prototypes, so I don't really know how people actually had time to THEN go make the final version. Maybe they had more students on each team. Maybe they could dedicate more time during the school day to the project. Maybe they were just faster than us. Anyway. Most of them supported weight (as long as you didn't move around too much). They presented their chairs on the day of their finals, and we had interesting discussions as to what worked and what didn't work and WHY and what could be tested to improve the chairs.

I also handed out a questionnaire that I found informative. The prompts were something along the lines of (because of the project):
* what did you learn about yourself?
* what did you learn about engineering?
* what did you learn about chairs?
* what do you like about your chair?
* what could be improved?
* and various questions where they graded themselves on each aspect of the project.

I liked this last section. Instead of letting them choose a 0% - 100% grading scale, I worded it as follows. I think it then was clear for the students to decided on their grade:

Last Day of School

Sort Of. I've become more relaxed about making sure EVERYTHING is done before the last bell on the last day. You know. "The Check Out List". Make sure you: turn in your keys, box everything up, turn in all technology, do a complete inventory of all PLTW items on a new system on the computer, have finals graded and packaged up and stored, ....

Yes, I still do those things, but I'm not too worried about them getting done by ___. Now maybe that makes me the jerk to work with, but here are my thoughts. I know I'm ethical, and I know I need to do those things, and I know I will do them. BUT. I'm not going to kill myself doing them by a certain time frame when more pressing things need to be done: grading the finals thoughtfully, entering the grades and making sure kids get the grades that will serve them best, talking with kids that either will not be back or just I'll miss or they'll miss me over the summer. Also, I don't mind going in partial days for those first 2 weeks of summer, it'll break up my day from my potential slouching on the couch sessions interspersed with trips to the refrigerator.

Today was the last day for kids, but tomorrow the staff has to go in and work and have a year-end review. I can do some packing then and on Friday and next week.

Phew! Over! Done! Sort of. Then as usual, there's the summer plans I have: go to D.E. training for PLTW for 2 weeks (ooh, acronym city), learn TI-Inspire and make worksheets for beginning teacher/student users, make activities for TI-Inspire, learn electronics before above-stated workshop, learn/practice computer programming, relearn and revamp my precalculus curriculum, revamp geometry and potentially teach it to a potentially new geometry teacher, read/have fun/relax/see movies/purge my house of more stuff that's just sitting there/knit-crochet 3 baby gifts ....

Proud "Mama"

This year in IED (the Project Lead the Way engineering course) I decided to assign a "cardboard" chair project. I had gone to a workshop in February, and 2 other IED teachers presented this project, and I totally had to do it. My class started right after our spring break in March, and I decided to do the project with my students. I JUST finished my chair, and my students' chairs are in various stages of completion.

I altered their project to fit my school's needs and time frame and such, and the kids stressed out and grumbled and such, but then I heard various whispers of them being impressed with themselves for designing and creating something totally from scratch and from their own imaginations. Part of the specs were that it could only be made out of cardboard, and it had to support 200 lbs.

I finished mine today, and it worked! Woot! Anyway, just a bragging post to show pictures, and because I was hopeful that it would work, but deep down wasn't quite sure I could pull it off.

Quarter Scaled Mock Up:


In Production:


Finished Product:


Goofy Person In Chair:

Like Terms

Oy! We're reviewing for our geometry finals. We're including a ton of algebra embedded very sneakily into problems. We have to dredge our minds to remember that using the Pythagorean Theorem on a right triangle with sides of length: x, 5, and 3x means that I can't just write, "3x^2"; I have to write "(3x)^2".

Then we have to remember that sometimes like terms are tricky little buggers. How do you add x^2 + x^2? Hmmm, maybe it's x^4, or maybe it's 2x^4, or maybe I just don't know. Here's a conversation I tried to get started so that a student could see the light and say, "OH! but of course, Ms. D, that's OBVIOUSLY 2x^2". It went something like this:

Me: Okay, the numbers in front are just counting numbers.
Her:
Me: For example, what's one cat plus one cat?
Her: A kitten.
Me:

Oy!

We FINALLY got it. This time.

Units Conversion

Probably in math classes across the country no matter what level (algebra through calculus), right now, if you asked a student, "how many feet squared is 100 inches squares?", the majority of them would JUST divide by 12 to get their answer. Right? Right?

I've tried various things throughout the years, and things "stick" for the unit, but later, say the following year or years, I ask the same question, the student reverts back to JUST dividing by 12. Must be hardwired into their heads.

Anyway, this came up again yesterday in geometry class with the following problem:

You want to paint the exterior of a cylindrical container with a 4 inch radius and 15 inch height. Paint costs 86 cents per square foot, how much would it cost.

I had an answer bank on the sheet, and LO AND BEHOLD, their answer was not on there. Hmmmmmm. Then I prompted: be careful with your units. OH! Okay, convert convert. OH! the answer is STILL not on there. Hmmmmmm. The dreaded JUST dividing by 12 dilemma. Anyway, I held up a piece of white paper and basically did what you see here below.

It SEEMED to make sense to the students. I liked the visual and the methodical dividing the side by 12 AND the algebraic equation by 12 right afterward, so they see what happens. It SEEMED to stick, but I'm not going to fall for that again. I'll quiz them again next year or two to see. My optimistic self thinks, "YES! I've solved the problem of world peace." Don't burst my bubble. Anyway, one more example to add to the arsenal.

Wolfram HWK on 3D solids

I have no idea how this is going to work, but I'm going to try it anyway. My 9th graders will be out of class all week in one of my preps. I'll catch them back up during review week on these basic topics on V and SA, but here's their homework due Friday:



I have found in the past if I leave things open enough for this type of population, they (most of them) run with it. This will be their chance to explore.

3D Cram Session

This week will be the last week of new material before we start reviewing for finals. This week is also our week of EOC testing. So, I won't see my 9th graders at all, and I still want to refresh their memories on volumes and surface areas of 3D objects. Sheesh, I have to manage my time better next year and remember that we have more "wasted" weeks than I planned for. Let's see 6-8 days of material crammed in 2 block days, 2 of which I don't see them. Quality instruction. What makes me not TOO worried is that they've seen it before (not that it's immediately accessible in their memories), and they're hard working and will do what I ask via e-mail.

Anyway, my vision is to "teach" them via e-mail and online quizzes. Here's the formula sheet they'll paste in their notebooks:



Now I'll get to use proprofs.com to make some "homework" quizzes I can check virtually.

Haiku Fun

On the latest test for my 10th grade geometry kiddies, my last "question" was: Write a haiku about geometry, and I refreshed their memories ... (3 lines: 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables).

Along with the "non answers", and the kidlets who didn't know what a syllable was (eeeeee), here were some fun ones:

Geometry, huh?
Well, it is so very hard,
But it's also fun. *

*(but hard.)
[Love the fact that she had to stress the difficulty]

In geometry
you're the master of numbers
watch while I compute.

Math can be fun. Just
try geometry. Really!
You will love this class.

Geometry is
equations and big circles.
It is very fun!

What am I taking?
It's a geometry test.
That's what I'm taking.
[Too funny]

Math is difficult.
Geometry is worse, though,
but I still love it.

Geometry is
an intelligent subject.
There's so much to it.

Geometry is
scary, horrifying, fun
but I learn the shapes.

Math is very hard
I'll cry uncontrollably
But D_____ ____ is cool.

I need "vinegar".
Math makes me really angry.
You evil llama.
["vinegar" is in reference to me bringing balsamic vinegar to school and the kids thinking it was a bottle of wine and me playing along. "llama" .... I don't know, somehow I got labeled the "llama lady". Don't ask.]

I need to pass this
Geometry. Pretty Please.
I will try my best.

Geometry is
About the shapes and logic.
It be more math, bleh!

Oh, Geometry!
You make my head ache so much.
Why Geometry?

Don't be sad with math.
It is useful in some ways.
Yea, Geometry.

Love geometry.
It is extremely helpful
all around the world.

Self Teaching Segment Area

We have 4 crazy weeks left of school. Every time we blink either our schedule is shortened for (fill in the blank) assemblies, or students are missing for AP exams (but only for some classes of your prep), or students are pulled out for EOC field tests (and again only for some classes of your prep), or since there's a FAIR for the environment, so we have 40 minute classes and then a ton of prep for the fair. Weeeeee.

Anyway, lots of deep breathing going on here. Funny story. I brought some balsamic vinegar to school for my lunch salad, and I happened to leave the bottle out on my messy desk after lunch. Some time during my afternoon classes a student asked, "is that wine?!" I played along and said yes, that they were driving me to drink.

Anyway, in the spirit of needing the kids to self teach a LOT the next couple of weeks, here's what we did yesterday. I'm LOVING the answer bank concept. The answers are jumbled up, but the kids have immediate feedback on whether they did things correctly. They also are more apt to immediately go back and search for their errors if they don't see their answer. ALSO, I don't have to spend the extra time coming up with a corny joke to make up and to fashion to fit. ALSO, I can have repeat answers, and it doesn't matter because I just put both of them down.

Here it is:

Teacher Appreciation Week

Funny Story. This week is T.A.W., and I think our AP nudged our students into writing thank you letters to the teacher (or some such gesture) because I'm getting them trickling in. They're sweet and make my day.

Anyway, today in geometry, I'm teaching the FASCINATING area concept, and I wanted to make a visual point, so I scanned the room, and saw a student seemingly doodling and not looking up. I called her on it and got her attention and went on. Flash forward to the end of class. I'm walking around the room, and I see there are cookies on her desk, and I jokingly said, "Oh! Are those for me? Thanks!" guffaw, guffaw.

Then she says, "yes, they ARE for you, and here's a note with it. THIS is what I was doing when you called me out in class."

Awkward.

Radical Like Terms

I threw out a goofy story one day a few weeks ago to get the kids to manipulate radicals properly, and it seemed to help some kids, so I thought I'd share ... and I guess I'll share in building up order instead of the order in which it happened.

I make sure to ask a student (or class) what this means: . I get a variety of answers:
* I don't know
* 4 times ?
* are you asking me?
* what?

So then I look suddenly across the room, "Look over there! What's that?". They look. "Just see those 4 cute little s running around!" And I go on to describe that you're just counting in shorthand how many there are.

And then if there's a problem like + , I expand the story: "... and over by the door, 8 more sexy s just joined the party! How many are in the room now?"

I guess it sticks with SOME of the students because today we had a problem like: (12)() and someone was wondering how to multiply it. So I asked: "what does mean?". Pretty quickly someone answered: you have 12 little s running around. And then we were able to finish the problem (and you have 12 sets of those 12, so .....

My next goal (someday) is to have them do a dramatic interpretation or story or SOMETHING emotional about + . I've read that things that pack an emotional punch in some way stick better in your head. Or maybe it's just the punching part ....