Reflections and Translations Desmos Activities

Translations Desmos Activity
Reflections Desmos Activity

I am extremely late in writing this post. I actually did these activities about a month or so ago, but I have been so sidetracked. I did these in mid-January, but after we did the activities, we had staff development, MLK Day, other meetings, and nine snow days. Not to mention that I had a birthday in there with working basketball games, as well as planning for our visit from the Tennessee Education Association.

So, I bet you are wondering what this has to do with Geometry, and the answer is "Absolutely Nothing!" I was just giving you an insight into my life.

Anyways, back to these activities. Instead of having students take notes on reflections and translations, I figured I would use the Desmos Activity Builder to create lessons. Our school currently does not have 1:1 or anything like it. Thankfully my friend Patty, who is the business technology teacher, has her planning period at the same time that I have my geometry class, so I asked her if I could bring my class in and do the activity. Of course, she was totally awesome and cool with it.

Let's reflect on how the lessons went. No pun intended.

Translations
I had a hard time getting the kids to mind and to shut up while I explained a couple of things. I told them and told them until I finally said that I would not take them back into the lab to do the reflections activity. I think that many students were engaged, especially those who sometimes aren't as engaged. I had to be observant to make sure that students were on task. However, I wasn't going to say anything about that as long as they were doing the work. I think that students were generally engaged and catching on, though, which was one of the main points.

Reflections
The reflections lesson went MUCH better. Students were on much better behavior, especially since I threatened them to not do the activity. Students were more engaged and were more able to visually see the graphs and reflections. I wish that I would've put more multi-step translations and refections in the presentations. I would definitely do this again, especially since there is talk of our district going 1:1 next school year.

I would love some feedback about these activities, so please look through them and comment. The links are at the top. Thanks!

A New Shift: Why I Give Feedback Before Grades

Today is our seventh snow day, and I thought I would take a few minutes to blog about a new practice that I have been doing this semester. I was first inspired by this post from Lisa Bejarano which led me to this video and blog post from Ashli Black. Furthermore, I was having a conversation about this same subject with Megan Heine on Twitter yesterday, so I felt like I needed to blog about it.

After reading through these resources, I felt like I had discovered a new avenue of thinking that I had never considered before. I had always assumed that putting grades was a standard practice. I am so glad that I stumbled upon these two blog posts because it allowed me to go out of the comfort zone. When teachers are evaluated here in Tennessee, one of the categories on the TEAM Rubric is Academic Feedback (both in oral and written form). This is a category with which I have struggled to get above a 3, but the TEAM Rubric is good for teachers to get feedback from evaluators. 

Let me describe the main changes that I have done in my classroom. Then I will describe why I have made these changes. 

• When I give a quiz, I give feedback, and I circle the questions in which were incorrect. This allows me to be able to give up for when I go back and put on the grade after the fact. I call the students up to my desk one by one so that they can read the feedback. I also try to be meticulous about keeping up with quizzes (to cover myself). After students have read the feedback, I go back and put on the grade. For the classes I teach this semester, I have found that this practice has been helpful for students, and it also makes students more responsible. 
• Instead of assigning a daily independent practice, I assign a "Spiral Review" assignment, which has problems from previous standards and has about 10-15 problems. Students have a week or so to get this turned in to me. When they turn it into me, I give them feedback and allow them to correct it. Because it is a lot for me to keep up with mentally, I will take it until a certain point in the nine weeks, so I have time to grade it. However, it is a 0 in the grade book until I get it (since we can't put Incompletes in our grade book). That's another issue in itself, though

Why the changes? 

• The blog posts and videos at the beginning of the post provided a new shift for me. I think that we as a society are in a dangerous paradox about grades and learning. I feel that a lot of times that students are more concerned about grades than learning.  However, if you are learning, your grades are going to reflect that, so it's almost contradictory. Here we want good grades, but we are okay with not learning. That's not acceptable or cool! End of story. I implemented the feedback strategies in hopes to change that mindset of students that it's okay to only worry about the grade. When students see the grade, most students could not care less about the feedback. 
• I implemented the Sprial Review because I have found that many of my students have issues with retention, even from day to day. That is a problem, especially when math is a building block and our state loves standardized testing. So, it is my hope that the Spiral Review will help with increased retention of important concepts. I also hope that by allowing students to correct these review homework assignments that retention also increases. Another reason I implemented this is because we lost anywhere from 10-15 days each spring semester because of inclement weather since we are in a very rural area that can't handle snow well due to mountainous/curvy/hilly terrain. The only issue I have had with this is getting students to turn in assignments. These assignments only count for 15 percent of a student's grade, while quizzes/tests count as 45 percent. 

How this can improve 

• I liked Lisa's idea in her blog post (see above) about having students respond to the feedback. However, I am not for sure about implementing this just yet. 
• I should probably have students who make below a certain score be required to retest. However, I am a believer in personal responsibility, so this is why I do the Request to Retest form instead. I also do not believe in forcing students to retake tests because many students have test anxiety. 

Let me explain the Request to Retest form. I took this from a Google search and then adapted it to my needs. It makes students explain what they made, why they made that grade, and three tangible activities that they can do to improve on the skill. Before a student is allowed to retest, the student, their parent/guardian, and I all have to sign it. Students then have to sign up for an appointment before being allowed to retake. This, once again, puts the responsibility on the student. It also gets the parent involved. 

Here are a few snapshots of the feedback I give. It allows them to see misconceptions, and it allows me to see their misconceptions, which are often basic, minute (yet major) errors. Hope you can read my handwriting here. Enjoy! 

The Snowflake Method for Factoring

Needless to say, I am more than a few days late on this post. I meant to do this a couple of weeks ago, but last week was insane. I had basketball games on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. I went to eat with my girlfriend and a friend that I hadn't seen in a while. I had school on Thursday, an Education Association meeting at the elementary school that lasted until near 6:00. I then had to grade tests for an hour and a half, which meant that it was 7:30. I went down to Subway (which is walking distance from my house) and grabbed a sandwich. I also didn't get a planning period on Thursday due to watching another class and a post-conference about my evaluation with my principal. Then I had to tutor a kid for most of my planning on Friday, which meant that I got lesson plans done about two hours ago.

Anyways, let's talk about the Snowflake method for multiplying trinomials. I first learned this method from a colleague in Greenville, Mississippi during my first year of teaching. I have used this method from then until now. I didn't use it last semester, but I feel like it's a trusty method for the most part. After not using it last semester, I decided it was time to dig it back out for students.

To do the snowflake method, here are the following steps.

1. Label a, b, and c, which is standard for working with quadratics in the form ax^2+bx+c=0
2. Draw your snowflake, which is an x with a horizontal line through the center. 
3. Place the a terms on the sides above the center line. 
4. Place a*c at the top. 
5. Place b at the bottom (b for bottom).
6. Find your two factors that multiply to get a*c and add to get b. 
1. It's still guess and check, though. 
7. Take the sides of your snowflake and write as binomials.
8. Check using distributive property.

Here is a link to a video I made using ShowMe. Snowflake Method for Factoring. Check it out! 

Here are a few pics from our classroom. If you have any questions about the Snowflake Method, please feel free to contact me by filling out the contact me form on the side of the blog. I would love to discuss the method with you. 

MTBoS Blogging Initiative: Dance, Dance Transversal

This is a lesson that is totally stolen from the MTBoS, so let's give credit where it is due. I used this activity today with my 1st Block Geometry class. I used this link from Jenn (darn you autocorrect) Vadnais over on her blog. So, it wouldn't let me link her full name. Sorry about that.

Anyways, that is not what is important here.

Before the lesson, I went to three different stores to find masking tape, and, finally, Rite Aid had some that was for my needs. I went up to the school yesterday afternoon, and I found that to set up for the activity, and thankfully, I have Geometry during first block.

Here are some unflattering photos my girlfriend took of me setting up the room.

I noticed when I was there yesterday that the internet was out. I then arrived at school and found out that the whole building's internet was out. I was panicked. Here I had a fun lesson, and the internet was down. Thankfully, the tech guys were there immediately and fixed the problem, so I owe a shout out to the tech guys!

I did this on my phone when I got to school and then at the end of first block on my phone between class periods. I was being a smart aleck and used a reference from Amish Paradise/1999 when writing the first tweet. However, I am fortunate that the internet was up, so the tech guys deserve props. 

Now, to the lesson. 

I had students discuss relationships about the four types of angles (alternate interior, alternate exterior, same side interior, and corresponding). I reiterated these throughout the lesson. We did several examples of problems, and then I let students get mini-whiteboards, which they love!! I then let students do several problems, and, one at a time, I called "Boards Up!" to do a quick formative assessment. It seemed that students were getting it well.

Then it was time for Dance, Dance, Transversal. I had students stand up, pick a partner, and then find a transversal in the room. We did Respect, then Billie Jean, One Tribe, and then Uptown Funk last. The links to the videos are in the link above. I didn't know how to make videos with my own songs. :( Maybe I can learn for next year. 

Students generally didn't try on one song, so I paused the video. I stated that even though you may not be good at this, please just try. It's about having fun and learning the concept. Student attitudes improved greatly after this. For the closure, I had students write a quote for the blog about the activity. Student quotes are listed below. 

"It was fun and very helpful to remember and to wake us up" 

"We need some fox body mustangs"-not for sure about that one or what it means. 

"It was fun" 

"It was really fun" 

"It was a lot of fun, especially when Mr. Schoolcraft broke my concentration with his wooh! #uptownfunk 

"Helps to remember them all" 

"It was a bit difficult; make it on a bigger scale" 

"I liked it because we got to get up and move around" 

"I liked it, really keeps us hands on, which helps us learn best." 

"It was helpful, and I enjoyed it." 

"I enjoyed the activity; its fun and helpful." 

"Great activity. Schoolcraft had fire moves." 

"It was an odd activity. It was fun but you had two brains working on one area, but other than that, it was good for learning." 

"This activity was really fun and it made us think on our feet (literally) so I definitely think it will help us to remember the notes we took." 

"I'm glad we did this activity. It helped me more than I thought I would." 

"If I knew the different spots better, then it would've been kinda fun, but it was hard." 

"It was chill. I learned it kinda." 

"It was good. Helped me learn." 

"I liked it." 

Reflection Moment: 

• I would have liked to made the transversals bigger, but I didn't have the room to do so. 
• I should've had the kids do a dry run of it before we played and explored each of the relationships again. 
• I think that the kids generally had fun while learning. 
• I will definitely do this activity again. 

I would love to hear your thoughts, feelings, advice, reflections, etc.