Friday, January 07, 2011

Geometry Cartoon Results

Love My Kids! I showed them my "beautifully rendered" cartoon depicting the SAS congruence postulate, and gave them their assignment. I basically wrote on the back of that cartoon something to the following effect:

1. Pick one of the following thms/posts
2. Create a cartoon, fairytale, soap opera, .... that shows your thm/post
3. Make it neat, accurate, .....
4. Suggestion: pick soon, then mull over your idea since that's the hardest part, THEN tomorrow create it. (we're on block schedule)

We had a discussion about it not looking like it's a last minute haphazard work.

Here are some samples of what I got back. It's a good mix, and I'd say about 90% of my students created something on par with these. I think I partly got good results because it's the 1st week back from break, so they don't have TOO much other homework. Also, I haven't done many "fun" homeworks for these 10th grade geometry students, so that's another potential reason.

This student is also taking French:


This is how she talks, so it's really funny. I freakin' love it:


Love the classroom theme:


Jerry Springer-esque. Hysterical:


Some people went above and beyond:

Holy Cow, a fairy tale in a booklet:


Very Creative:

5 comments:

  1. These are wonderful - I would LOVE to see this kind of work from my geometry students (although I am not sure I could elicit it from them). Did you have a sample for them that spurred them to create such rich products? Thanks

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  2. Thanks. I KNOW, I was in awe of what they did. See the post right below this one, and that's what I showed them. I made a big deal of saying, "now I KNOW you can't draw as great as I can, so don't be jealous....", etc making fun of my art work.

    I also had a discussion of the hardest part being the coming up with the idea, so they should commit early (within an hour of our class), then spend the remaining day or so thinking of things. I joked that they should pretend to be listening to their friends while secretly planning this.

    I also had a "jokey" discussion of how sad it is when they turn in something that looks last minute. I pretended I was looking at a finished product saying, "ohhhh, bless their heart, they just finished this last period."

    And like I said, it was the 1st day back and they didn't have other homework .... so all this combined with the fact that I teach really good kids this year I think contributed to this. ... Your kids may surprise you (or not). I know one girl (the Jerry Springer one) blew me away. I wouldn't have known she had that humor in her.

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  3. Anonymous10:04 PM

    These are AMAZING! I teach 8th grade geometry. We did Triangles last semester and are now on to parallelograms. This is such a great idea I can definitely use in the future! How are you grading these? What about students who aren't very artistic? Are you grading more for the comprehension of the concepts? I love your blog! :)

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  4. Well, maybe part of the success was that I didn't label it a "project", so maybe they didn't feel stressed about performing up to par. I basically graded it as a homework assignment, and it's on completion.

    I did have the students do a gallery walk, though, and everyone had to give comments to 4 posters. I will also give comments, and in addition to the positive comments I'll find a way to point out if there are math errors (which there were).

    I guess my main point of this was for them to spend more time with the theorems/postulates and learn them from a different aspect in hopes of them sticking in their heads.

    Thanks for your kind comments.

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  5. Oh, and the artistic abilities of students was not an issue. Everyone seemed to be able to create a triangle person or such, so that was okay.

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