Guess the Correlation Game

We were doing line of best fit, linear regression, and correlation coefficients in my 2nd block Algebra II class yesterday. The kids were engaged, so I took them to this website that I accidentally stumbled upon when doing a google search for another website to guess correlation coefficients. I came across Guess the Correlation. I decided to click on this for kicks and giggles. The website that I originally went to was Guessing Correlations, which isn't as challenging as Guess the Correlation. I was unaware at the moment what a goldmine I had found randomly.

I put up the game on the Promethean Board, and I sat at my desk and let students give me values to input for the correlation coefficient. It was so entertaining! My kids were so engaged that I actually had to tell them to calm down. They would name five to six values for the correlation coefficient, and I would make them agree on one for me to put in the computer. The nice thing about this activity is that it gives you the real r-value along with your guessed r-value so that way you can tell your difference from the true correlation coefficient. It was neat because students got somewhat better at predicting the correlation coefficients.

It was nearing the end of class, and I had students begging me to let them play one more round. Then I had several that said that they were going home to play later in the evening. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask them today. I think I might even let them play at the end of the day tomorrow when all of the kiddos are done with their statistics test tomorrow (if there is only like 10-15 minutes, though).

Here are a few screenshots from the website. Let me know what you think and if you do this with your kids!

Spring Break 2016: Los Angeles

Sadly, it is time that another spring break comes and goes. Although this blog is primarily about my adventures as a rural high school math teacher, there are times that I do activities outside the classroom, which also account for those "tales of a rural high school math teacher."

My girlfriend and I went to LA over Spring Break to attend a wedding of her best childhood friend. So, we decided to do some sightseeing along the way. We flew out of Nashville and took a four hour flight to LAX. It was nice to gain three hours that day, which also meant for a long day, especially after teaching. The part of Tennessee where I live is three hours ahead of LA, but Nashville is only two. So, we gained an hour going to the airport, which also helped with flight times!

The next morning we went and spent the day at Disneyland, and then went to a Shabbat dinner, which is a dinner that is hosted by Jewish families on Friday nights. Our friend's now husband is Jewish, so this was another new experience for me.

The next day, we went to In-N-Out Burger, which I had also never had until now. We both got the Double Double and the Animal Fries, which are French Fries with cheese, caramelized onions, and In-N-Out's special sauce. Then we went to Beverly Hills and explored. My girlfriend's cousin who lives in LA picked us up in Beverly Hills, and we went to Burbank to the WB Studios tour. We got to go on the sets of Supergirl, 2 Broke Girls, The Fosters, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show, but no pictures were allowed on the sets. Also, we were able to see some cool Batman and Harry Potter memorabilia as well as the Friends set of Central Perk.

We went to the Griffith Observatory, Hollywood, and then back to our hotel (with some exploring along the way). We also rode the LA Metro, and we witnessed a couple of shady actions. Two people started cursing at each other in the seats next to us and threatened to fight. On another train, one panhandler was asking for water and food (which I have experienced before). The guy next to us told the panhandler to steal the food and water. This was also next to where we were sitting.

Monday was the beach wedding, and it was magnificent. The weather was perfect, and there were essentially no clouds in the sky. The ceremony was nice as well! Tuesday, we went to Santa Monica to the Promenade and wandered around Santa Monica and Venice.

Wednesday, it was time to return to the east to colder weather. :(

I'll leave you with a few pictures.

In-N-Out Double Double and Animal Fries 

Rodeo Drive-Beverly Hills 

Sprinkles Cupcakes ATM

View of Downtown Los Angeles from Griffith Observatory 

TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood 

Although I don't drink coffee, I LOVE TOMS! 

Bulldog Banter, 1st Edition: Quotes from Room 105.

Sometimes, kids truly say the darnedest things. So, I wanted to be able to document some of the great stuff my kids say, much to my delight or dismay. Every now and then, I will be presenting these in the form of Bulldog Banters. I have to give credit to my girlfriend for part of the name. I didn't want to steal Sarah Hagan's post title called Things Teenagers Say over at Math Equals Love.  I tried coming up with something related to teenagers. Then I thought about paring it with something related to our mascot, the Bulldogs! By the way, Go Bulldogs! Then my girlfriend came up with Bulldog Banter. Then I felt I needed to explain what Bulldog Banter is, quotes from my room, Room 105.

Enjoy these little nuggets of entertainment.

"What do you mean, Justin Bieber?"-Quote from a student when we were reading John and Betty's Journey Into Complex Numbers and she misread the quote "What do you mean?" asked Betty.

"Like a good neighbor, Schoolcraft is there." -Quote from a student who told me that my last name reminded her of the State Farm jingle.

"It's not sorcery. It's Schoolcraft." -Student quote that I cannot remember where it came from

"It's snowing and icing. It's slicing."-Student quote when a couple of flurries were coming down at school.

"That looks like Spongebob's buttcheeks."-Quote when we were doing graphs of polynomials on Desmos, and we did some additional discovery.

"I always wanted to be a hobbit when I grew up."-Telling about our childhood dreams

"Megatron on the blog"-I forgot what this meant.

"Ali, you've not asked him to dinner all year."-Yes, I had a student who asked me to dinner several times last year, and I have her again. By the way, I said no!

"If you tell us the name of your blog, we will have it trending on Twitter."...note...I didn't give it to them. I said I had a Twitter, though.

"I bet his username is Daddy-J."-after telling them I had a Twitter.

"I would have done a few things differently in my childhood. I wouldn't eat cat litter again."

Me: I am not going to be here on Friday. I am going to Atlanta to visit with my friends who are in Atlanta from New York City.
Student(s): Are you going to elope?
Me: No!
Student: Can we come to your wedding?
Me: I am not having a wedding anytime soon?
Student #2: Can I be your best man?
Me: Uh...no.

Student: Can we have your number?
Me: Maybe when you graduate.
Student: Ms. Shelly (the sub who got there as I was leaving), can you give us Schoolcraft's number.
Ms. Shelly: No, now be quiet and do your work.

Trashketball

I have been at my current school for almost three years now, and one activity that has been a tried and true activity is Trashketball. I first learned about this activity when I taught in Mississippi in my first year. One of my former colleagues played this with her students, and I was very hooked! I talked to her, and I tried it a time or two in my classroom down there. It wasn't the best success for me, but I don't remember it being too horrible.

Then I came to my current school in 2013. When I found that I might have probable success with it here, I decided to give it a try. Needless to say, Trashketball has become a staple in my classroom. I have students begging me to play it several times a semester, since we are on block scheduling here.

Since we have had midterms for this week, I decided to let the kids play trashketball, and we had a lot of fun! Yes, we! It takes a lot of mental stamina to do this game, but it's generally worth it.

Here are the rules for Trashketball (as they work best for my students and me). By the way, these are in no particular order. Also, I am attaching a video, which you can find here.  

1. Students are grouped (that is of your choosing). 
2. Students must take turns shooting. 
3. Let students come up with a school appropriate team name (instead of 1,2,3,4...etc). It makes the game more fun. However, give yourself veto power if the name is inappropriate. 
4. Give the students a question. If the team gets the question correct, then they get 1 point and the chance to shoot. You can do points however you like. I do 1,2,3 for simplicity. 
5. Trashketballs must be no more and no less than two sheets of paper. 
6. If students block another team's shot, then that team loses 5 points. 
7. If a students is on a cell phone, then the whole team loses 20 points. 
8. If students refuse to cooperate, then I have an alternate assignment, which usually consists of 100+ book problems. I have never had to exercise this option, though!! :) 
9. At the end, I usually do something like double points or triple points or something of the sort. 
10. The winner at the end receives a small prize (once again, your choice). 
11. Have fun!! 

As I said, the kids generally beg me to play this game several times a semester. Let me share a few pics from the past couple of days of review. 

I came up with this name 

Wampus Cats is a popular name here. 

Yes, that says #FreeKe$ha

As I said, a popular name 

Here is an example of a question that I put up for kids to solve. 

At the end, tally up all of the points. 

A student in my honors class drew this, and, yes, sometimes kids call me this, both J-Money Swagcraft and Savage. Savage is a compliment, meaning that you roast kids without any apologies. 

Here are the teams and scores from my honors class. 

Here is the box that the kids shoot into. If it bounces out, it doesn't count. 

I came up with #Schoolcraft (also a real thing) to a team who couldn't come up with a name. 

Triangle Inequality Theorem with Spaghetti

We were learning about the Triangle Inequality Theorem in my geometry class this past week, so I found an activity on the internet about using spaghetti noodles to do examples to prove the Triangle Inequality Theorem. The link to the activity is here, but there are many resources out there for this activity. I am going to redo and revamp the activity this summer to include some more stuff, though.

I think that students generally enjoyed the activity, and a couple of kids even stuck leftover noodles in their ear gauges, which I felt was questionable. However, as long as they did the activity, I wasn't going to make a big deal of that, and I let them have fun for a few minutes while the rest of the class finished.

Let's talk about the positives of the activity. I think that students were pretty engaged, and the directions were self-explanatory, which allowed me to circulate the room to observe students and to ask questions to extend the activity and student thinking. When I do this activity again, I want to include more examples in the activity and allow students to create their own examples and to integrate more critical thinking for increased conceptual understanding.

I am kind of tired at the moment, even though it is 8:00 on a Saturday night. So, let me wrap this up with some student photos.

Negative Infinity

Yesterday, during my 2nd block class, we were discussing polynomial graphs. I had an activity pulled up on the Promethean board from Desmos Activity Builder on graphs of polynomials. We had discussed the concept of end behavior of polynomial graphs on Friday. I told my kids that end behavior would be an abstract concept, but students were able to make the connection between graphs and end behavior as we were doing the Desmos activity. However, this brought up a whole other discussion on the concept of negative infinity.

A student asked what the concept of negative infinity was and how it was concrete. At first, I described it in the form of debt. I said "If I owed you $20, then I would be $20 in the hole. This student was still not confident with the topic. He wasn't for sure why it existed and wondered why we didn't just use zero. After taking a couple of minutes and listening to student input, I suggested that I put this up and get some suggestions from the MTBoS. As always, the MTBoS delivered!

First, I want to give shout outs to Jim Doherty (@mrdardy), Stronger Math (@sneffleupagus), Susan Russo (@Dsrussosusan), and David Griswold (@DavidGriswoldHH) for their input and suggestions. I will let the tweets speak for themselves.

I went back to class today and brought back the info that the MTBoS provided. This still was proving to be a struggle. One of my students described it in terms of borrowing on a house. For example,  if you borrow $50k on a house, you are in the hole $50k. Then I described negative infinity as a bottomless pit. This still didn't work. The student wasn't for sure why we just don't use zero. I really had no words, and neither did the class.

I thought it was a legitimate question, and I was very proud of the input and engagement that the students gave to the topic. I was impressed with their reasoning as well. However, I would love some of your input as well!! Feel free to share, comment, etc.