In Class 1st Day Activity

Okay, after 17 years of teaching, maybe I WON'T leave everything until the last minute, because I think I've just finished all my 1st day things. Hah! Who am I fooling. This is a fluke. Soon it will be back to business as usual. This year is different, though, because I think I'm going to fly out for the weekend before school starts to see my turning-80-years-old dad, so I won't have those 2 days to get ready.

I did just remake my 1st day in-class activity for precalculus. It really has nothing to do with precal, but that's the class I'll use it in. I like my calculus activity from last year and will do it again, and for digital electronics, I'm going to have them do a DE thing, and for CS, they will be coding independently from day 1.

I was inspired by this activity from KFouss. Woot! Internet Searches! 

Here is my version:

These will be done by the kids in class while I'm snapping pictures and calling roll and passing out a seating chart and passing out more information.
 

Who Vacuumed Up All the Summer?

Sheesh! I just realized that I only have 2 unstructured-ish weeks left of summer. Must. Soak. Up. Fun.

I did enjoy doing a crafty thing by knitting and felting a "bowl" for a friend (just look away from the glaring error that SOMEONE was too "zen" to fix):

And I have revised my first-day homework assignment:

And I'm trying to sit less by sprinkling exercise in throughout the day via a checklist:

 Other than that ....

Studying Tips for Students

I recently attended a CS workshop for teachers, and if you live in TX, I highly recommend it for next summer. We learned a variety of things, and though some topics were not immediately adaptable to taking back to the classroom, they still were fascinating things you could mention to your students or adapt in some way to your population. Example, did you know that your brain doesn't have to process how to walk (for the most part), the mechanics of the motion are stored in your spinal cord.

One of the talks was on effective teaching, and the presenter mentioned VARK, which I had never heard of. This stands for visual/aural/read-write/kinesthetic, and, of course, refers to learning styles. What I found useful in the talk was actual suggestions on how students could study for and take exams more effectively than they may be doing currently. The hand out was not in a form I would hand out, so I made my own version on half pages for the students to tape in their composition notebooks on the first day of class for future reference. I culled from the VARK website and others that offered tangible ideas.

Online they have a questionnaire for the kids to take to determine which type they are (yay, first night's homework!). I like that you can choose more than one answer for each question and that you could be a "multi-modal" learner. There are different versions of the questionnaire for adults and such (do a search on VARK).

I want the students to tape in ALL four styles into their notebooks because they may find helpful ideas from a mix of strategies.

Geometry Idea

Next year will be the 2nd year in a row I haven't taught geometry, but I had an inkling of an unformed idea for a possible exploratory activity. Whoa! Doesn't that sound like you just want to jump on it and use it the FIRST day of school (far far away from now).

I was in an Airport Shuttle and staring mindlessly out the window and saw a building wall made up of tessellated hexagons. Then I remembered how learned about angle sums of polygons in class by separating various polygons into triangles from one vertex and noticing a pattern [(#vertices - 2)*180]. 

Let's use the pentagon for an example of my future I-can't-use-it idea. Kids most likely don't know that there are 3*180 or 540 total degrees in all the interior angles of a pentagon. I was thinking of (for the pentagon group) having the kids use 10 pieces of spaghetti taped on 5 different scraps of paper to form 5 different angles. Then they would measure the angles and get a total sum of the 5 angles. Then they would try to manipulate the 5 taped down "2 sides and a vertex" scraps of paper to try to form a pentagon. 

I'm thinking there would be 4 or so people in a group, and they would each have a different sum they would most likely come up with. Most likely a pentagon won't be able to be formed unless they happen upon a 540 degree sum.

Then maybe they could try again. Then maybe they could see what works and get that sum (having a human error discussion at some point for measuring mistakes). I'm also thinking there would be different groups with 4 sides and 6 sides (3, too??).  In this way, they can see the tactical things that go wrong with angles that don't "fit". Then there would be a follow up summary and pattern.

Next post: things I could teach in 6th grade math ..... KIDDING

Playing with Math

I just finished a nonfictional Romance Book called "Playing with Math", edited by Sue VanHattum. It's filled with passion (for math), joy (of games and puzzles), good-looking heroes and heroines (math makes you sexy), conflict and tension (hello math haters and standardized tests), and a warm and fuzzy resolution (math conquers all). Okay, it's not really a romance novel, but the passion about math is threaded throughout the whole book. There's basically something for everyone, whether you are a math teacher of any sort, a parent, or a math enthusiast.

I teach in a public school to goofy high school students, so I can only give my perspective as a non-mother, non-math-circle-participant, non-unschooler, non-homeschooler. But just like in math, where you see patterns in one problem and can then extrapolate to solve OTHER problems, in this book, I could read about the variety of settings, and always find something that I can either take back to my classroom or take back to my mind to work on. 

Every other chapter is a math problem of some sort. These range in levels of difficulty and variety of math concepts. Many times I found myself putting the book down and pondering the cool problems and figuring them out. There are also a ton of resources listed, from books, to online options, to people you could e-mail and start a discussion with. This wealth of goodies in itself is a reason to read "Playing with Math".

Before I read this book, I only had my biased, public-school-teacher opinion of homeschooling and had never heard of unschooling. Through the various sections and vignettes shown, my opinions were swayed with an understanding of how such situations could be in the best interest of different students, and how kids could thrive. And even if I won't rush out and un-enroll my non-existent offspring and start unschooling their imaginary selves, I did find myself taking notes on each chapter to remember great quotes and philosophies and teaching techniques that I'd like to remember and adapt to my classroom.

I also enjoyed to peek into things I didn't know existed. There is a section on taking a math circle to a prison, and the nonthreatening and successful way the teachers engaged with the men. There is a section about the nonlinearity of learning math, written in a nonlinear and creative fashion, and it's filled with words I want to mull over and process. And these are just a few examples.

Whether you want to have a new source of good math puzzles, or find out how to start a math circle, or re-engage your love of math, or find more things/thoughts/techniques to bring back to your class this coming fall, or simply to stay awhile in the company of others that love math as much as you do, I think you can't go wrong with this book.

Binary Addition

I would like to move towards SBG for various basic topics in my Digital Electronics class next year. To that end, I will spend this summer creating and/or finding online practice tools for my students to hone their skills. 

One of the topics they learn is Binary Addition. After searching for "just the thing" online and coming up short, I created a Scratch program for them:
 

I think I'll leave it as such, but if you have any suggestions for improvement that can easily be done by a summer teacher, thanks for sharing.

Also, I had originally created this program with Java with the intention of making an applet to put on our school website. This turned out to be a pain full of "security issues" ... "bad!" .... "don't even think you can open or share this applet". Don't know if I'm doing something wrong, or if that's the way of applets these days, and I have to pay money or some such to be able to have that message not come up. Does anyone know?

Viva La "Inflated Sense of Self"

And by the way, Viva La End of the School Year.

This week our school got together as a team and discussed children and things that may benefit them next year and what resources they may need that we should provide. Threaded through the conversation a handful of times was that so-and-so had an "inflated sense of self" with the meaning that the kid may be in for some wake up call in terms of college applications and acceptances. I nodded my head in agreement because I knew the kid(s), but then later I started to wonder if we have it all wrong.

I think back to my childhood, and alternately absent and alcoholic and human and goofy as my parents were, they ALWAYS made us feel like we could do anything and why shouldn't we and of course it's possible. Maybe we were living in a (champagne) bubble and other adults were going around tsking and shaking their heads and wondering when our big fall would come. I know my 6th grade teacher despised me and thought I scraped the bottom of the barrel, and I know a few HS teachers and college professors that would scrunch their faces if they knew what I accomplished, but being "bubble girl" (and I now realize "inflated sense of self girl") I still plowed on. 

Maybe that's one of the important things we can provide for the kids we teach, "of course you can do it" ... "why not you" ... "don't be silly, it's totally within your reach". This, obviously, has to be sprinkled with lessons on hard work and persistence and grit and the power of failing and getting back up and such. But how sad the alternative would be, a kid looking at you and your shaking head and attitude of "bless your heart" and taking that to heart and giving up on whatever before they even put out their whole effort into the endeavor.

There are students I have who I don't know if they'll "do it", but who am I to decide. And mostly, I hope what comes out of my mouth and heart is, "DO IT" "you can do it" "obviously it's within your reach". I just do this without thinking all year long, but I'm reminded of the power of this when I get a smattering of end-of-the-year cards that state, "thank you for believing in my and not giving up on me". I am also reminded of this when a student, just by happenstance, gets put into a position to shine, and they soar way beyond what we've seen of them before. These may not necessarily be the kids that think they are all that, but whatever "that" is, hopefully I don't, as a teacher, contribute to snuffing it out before it has a chance.

Post Calculus Exam: Sonic Boom

I spent 2 of the class periods after the AP Exam exploring and expanding on a cool problem I found in Smith and Minton. The problem is about what a sonic boom is, and how you can visualize it graphically.

The first day we had to refresh our memories on parametric equations and graphing. Then the students looked up various things on the internet and wrote it in their notebooks as such:

We had some good discussion on the various speeds and if they are "exact" and what could change the values. Then I made sure they got what a Mach number is by the following "quiz" in their notebooks:

I had them look up the speeds of various vehicles and we tried to get a wide range of numbers and then they had to figure out the Mach numbers based on their speed of sound.

On the 2nd day we then read over the "yellow" paper from page one, and I had to make sure they understood what a unit on the graph was. That was fascinating. It was more of a struggle for them than I would have thought, but we eventually got to it, and again, good discussion.

Then the actual graphing began. We had to take it slowly and keep talking about what the units meant and how you made decisions and such. Here is the graph for a jet going Mach 0.8. We had to keep stressing that the "arcs" were at time 5 seconds after "start" of the 5 noises the jet made at various times:

 

Then we graphed the "same thing" but for the jet moving at Mach 1:

 

 The students were excitedly asking me question upon question, because really it is cool and wonder-ful ... and I kept mentioning that I'm not an expert, but that we should write their questions down to think about for later.

Then finally we did the same process for a jet moving FASTER than the speed of sound ... Mach 1.4:

 

We had to be cautious with scales and such and all sorts of great mathy things came up. Then class was over. 

I loved their enthusiasm and questions and wonderment at this actual topic.  

 

GrumpyCrabbyNess

Why are all these teenagers acting like ..... teenagers?! How old ARE you anyway? Behave and fly right!

Excuse me while I detox:

Our principal some time earlier in the year did away with bells for whatever reason. You were still required to show up to class on time, but you had to rely on yourself and your handy dandy watch/clock/cell phone. I let a ton of things slide in general (lie, but ...), but one thing I do not like is kids sauntering to class late. They started being 15 seconds late, then maybe a minute, then consistently 3 or so minutes. It got to be too much. So I instituted a "be in the room or get a demerit" policy last week. I hate giving demerits. Boo on being the bad guy. I know it's ultimately good for them, and I know I have to be consistent, and I know I still have a grumpy knot in my stomach for the about a bazillion demerits I have given out in the last several days. Kids have started coming to class on time. Shocker. I still have a grumpy teen that is consistently late. Yay! Have her for 2 classes. Twice the demerit fun.

AP Calculus Exam Studying. Hmmmmm. I think a good chunk of the kids are studying the way I think they should be studying. The rest are being, well, teens. I have carved out time in class to do released exams and have them discuss things. In my mind that's going to help the most. We will see in July when the scores come out.

AP Exams start this week. So do EOCs. And thus, so do tons of kids being gone from class in a sporadic fashion. Yay for being flexible and being able to roll with it. Or at least putting on my game face.

Good things: 

My CS class and I are going on a field trip to an apparently well-known local game developing business. We have spent some time playing their games and researching them and creating questions for the field trip.

The NHS group of kids I co-sponsor have done an amazing job this year with doing service and getting fund-raising ideas and actively participating.

My precal students are just a hoot, and even the not-so-strong-mathematically students are a treat to talk with.

Ice Cream.
 
 

What?!?! Me Study?!?!?

AP Calculus Exam coming up. Let's have the kids create a study calendar! That's the ticket. Because you know, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

I fell into the old Geometry Logic trap. Just because ~p --> q is true, it DOES NOT say anything about what p implies. Silly me. About a week after they all made their calendars, I checked in with about 3 or 4 of them. Sheepishly, they admitted that they were not adhering to their study calendars ... their beautiful calendars they set up.

We had a class powwow. We brainstormed. We came up with ideas. Who knows what will work.

Things I need to think about changing/adding next year: a part of the homework for the calendar that mentions what incentives they'll give themselves for studying ... maybe some strategies they need to write up for the times they DON'T feel like studying ... other?

I checked around with other AP teachers. Yup, their students (we all share) basically admitted to not doing extra studying outside of class ... much.

Okay.

Well, I've instituted some other motivations. Don't know what will work, so I'll do multiple ones of them. Here's one I thought of today after seeing something similar on Pinterest.

Today, I had them start a foldable that is due next class. I prepped for the insides by listing various things they need to memorize:

 

Then I made one myself (sort of) and made a flipped video for them to watch to see what goes on the inside. Here are the flaps:

 

 Here's a wee look on the inside. I didn't just want formulas, I wanted examples:

I'm SURE this will be the ticket. Girls LOVE pretty colorful things, right? They won't be able to tear their eyes away from it. They'll study daily.  

Making a Graph Updated...

A while ago, I used to make graphs for my worksheets in a way that, at the time, seemed reasonable. Hah! and Double Hah! I have seen the light. I don't know where I heard about this technique, but I am using it now, and just today, I enhanced it to be easier for me. 

Here is a finished graph that took about 4 minutes to make from a blank space:

I like this process because I can never seem to find my old "made" graphs, and if I do, they are never the right size.

Also, I used to make a similar grid using "tables", but then I would go and insert shapes with textboxes to do the scale. Tedious. I just realized today how I could do it all with tables. Viva la tables!

Here are instructions in case you are in need of graphs.

Quick PSA for Precalculus

We are now into our Logarithms and E Unit, but before that I wanted to review exponent rules and manipulations for a day. We did that, but I showed my students THIS Public Service Announcement. To set the stage for their project.

We went over 6 different exponent rules, and I mentioned that if everyone remembered them really well just from taking notes and practicing them, then we wouldn't need this review. I said that they each were assigned one of the 6 rules, and they had to make a PSA for that rule. 

We discussed that JUST restating the rule was not effective and sort of besides the point. We discussed that humor or shock value is effective. We discussed linking new things to things you know. We also discussed that the thinking of the actual content was the hardest part, and then you had to ink it out, so just use your "pockets of time" in the next 2 days to brainstorm through some creative ideas.

I also only gave them until the NEXT class to do it (8.5" x 11" paper, colored, correct, effective...). I also joked with them that if I had given them a week, they would have left it until the last minute anyway, so just pretend I assigned it last week.

Don't know if this will be effective or not, but I liked the project, and I liked seeing the wittiness and creativity of kids that I may not otherwise talk to that much because they're not the yappers in class. Here are some samples.

 

Time for AP Calculus AB Review

I handed this sheet out too late last year, and so didn't promote and stress effectively enough this aspect of their studying:

This year, I took some time in class today to stress each bullet. Basically, the theme was, "do something that will realistically work for you", and "show me that you have put some thought into this", and "if you find it's not working, then revise your schedule on the fly".

I personally know how it is that time just slips away if I don't have a firm plan of action on what to do when.

Hopefully, this will help the little boooooogers.
 

Seven Segment Display

In all of my classes this year, for the most part (unless I'm thoroughly bogged down and re-use an old key or such), I am doing the homework assignments that I assign my students fresh each year, and if I assign a project, I do it with them. I think this keeps me honest and I can keep my skills fresh and each year I can see what the issues may be and also commiserate with the students if things come up. Maybe everyone does this.

Anyway, in Digital Electronics, there is a Seven Segment Display project that we do. Here is what an SSD looks like. The students are supposed to do the logic and circuitry either to light up their birthday mm-dd-yy or to spell out a word/phrase. My phrase is "Go run 26.2". I have been working on it off and on with the students from the outset. Then I got "all that" and expected it all to work swimmingly the first time I did the breadboard. Hah! I have had a pickle of a time tracking down my errors. Then there are the students in various states of distress or completion or such that I have to help or talk down from the cliff or push along to actually put out some effort.

Our current phrase to each other is, "I am smarter than a plastic board!" to keep us going. I also keep their motivation up by telling them, "I have NEVER had a student fail this project, and you will NOT break my record" whenever they start whining, "but what if I don't finishhhhhhhhhhhh?"

Well, well, well, I just finished mine, and here is my YouTube proof. Woot! What do you know, I AM smarter than plastic!

 

Italy...

We just finished our spring break and it's back to business as usual (or maybe unusual since we need to remember how to teach/learn again). I got to go to Italy for a week and LOVED it (how could you not). 

We went to Rome, Siena, and Cinque Terre. 

 

Cool Rome Things: 

* You can just walk around town and be simultaneously hit with modern and ancient structures. 

* Catacombs.

* Pantheon.

* A mix of tourists from ALL over and chic locals going about their business.

Cool Siena Things:
* Panforte Panpepato!
* Medieval Buildings.
* Gorgeous churches.
* Great streets to walk around and observe and see the doors.

Cool Cinque Terre Things:
* Views.
* Trails to walk on between towns.
* Water.
* Hills.
* Easy trains between the 5 towns.

Observations:
* I love Duolingo and promise to be Italian-Fluent soon .... you know, like my "people" (or future people ... or people wannabes).

* Hey Roman Bus Driver, just because it's the 1,000th time you've been asked this question, it's just my 1st time asking it. Sorry to make your eyes roll.

* Hey badly-chaperoned students coming back on the plane from NYC, no one wants to hear about EVERYTHING about you all the way back home. Use your inside voices so that only 2 or 3 people around you can hear.

* Dear US coffee sellers, I think a field trip is in order to learn how to make non-bitter coffee.

* Dear TexMex food, thank you for the tradition of being our first delicious meal back when we return from "non Texas".

Straight Line Motion and AP-Style Questions...

Last year, I broke up notes into 3 different days, and yada yada yada'd my way through things in this unit. I did examples. I put definitions. I did tables and graphs and stuff. Do you see all those "I"s floating around?

This year, I gave a flipped lesson on ONE page of all inclusive notes on Straight Line Motion. Then we did "Waldo". I think that went okay. Today I did something I learned of in an AP workshop where one person is in the role of either positive/negative velocity and a 2nd person is in the role of pos/neg acceleration. They walked it out, and we discussed how the forces either work together to speed up or against each other to slow down. Someone made a funny video of it in my class. Good times.

Then "we" did THIS. I think it's good because it mixes calculator and non calculator skills. It also asks specific ONE question each on pos/veloc/accel type things that I found on free response questions. I also like the answer bank because of the immediate feedback the kids get so that they work harder and more instantly on figuring out things.

 

Straight Line Motion: Calculus

I don't know if this was effective today. We had a late start day, and the kids are already in SPRING BREAK mode, and everyone was brain dead. Did I kill them, or are they just being teens? The second one. Yes. 

Anyway, this  is what my students worked on to get a sense of position, velocity, and acceleration. I think I need to follow it up with more of the same, just to get them in the right frame of mind.

 

Vector! Vector!

You would have thought by the scrunched faces and cries of "this is harrrrrrrrrd" a bit ago, that I was slowly poisoning my students with math torture tools and stunting their growth. I had this "brilliant" idea that I wanted to tie their initial vector learning to video game programming. 

The first day went fine with notes and stickers and basics. Then the next day I thought they could self teach through a packet. It was "fine" except they were to make their own graphs/grids, and then the numbers weren't nice integers, then the estimation was doody, then ..... Drama in the math class! 

I always go back and forth with the, "they're bad at fractions and get worried about "wrong answers" if they're not integers, so I should have fractions in EVERY lesson" versus "Oy! New Topic! Hard enough. Let's not complicate it with fractions."

Anyway. Here is version three of a packet for teaching vectors. I don't know if it seemed to work well because they'd already had exposure, or if it was just effective on its own. I do know that I had to walk around the room and monitor errors and such.

Here is what we did with vectors today. I think in the future (after more torture), I would then give a mess of practice calculations with an answer bank to make it stick in their heads.

 

 

Best.Husband.Ever.

My husband is the nice spouse in our relationship. He also gives thoughtful presents whenever we actually do exchange gifts (not a big thing for us). 

He is currently in D.C., and had some extra time before his flight home, and he's fascinated with flying, so, hello Smithsonian Space & Flight Museum.

Anyway, he knows I'm fascinated with "bathroom issues", as in:

- Camping ... where will you "go"?
- Marathon ... hope I don't have to "go"!
- Getting Older ... diapers!
- Old people ... they may smell like they "went".
- Babies .... ew! changing diapers!

You get the picture.

I also love Mary Roach's books, and "read" on CD her book: Packing for Mars. If you've never read any of her books, they are a treat. "Stiff" was fascinating. But I actually couldn't get through the Mars book, because she does such detailed research and describes things so thoroughly, and when she got to the part where your underwear started disintegrating on your body because of "things", well, I just had to "put the book down".

Anyway, he sent me this picture because, as I said, he gives great gifts.

Accumulation Functions, Day 2

I think the other worksheet/class work went okay. It is too soon to tell. I made a day 2 sheet HERE. Also, there have been so many crazy days and now I am at a PLTW conference, so I STILL don't know if it is effective. Oh well, sharing is caring.

Quote that is resonating with me: Be a voice, not an echo.