Making Groups Work

It’s not Sunday and this post is a week late!  I just finished up the first trimester at school so I’ve been swamped!  We have also experienced a blogging slow down.  It’s the busiest time of the year for most people!  So instead of a weekly posts for the month of December, let’s do one blog post this month.

The topic for December is “Observe Yourself:  Phone Pocket“.  At Twitter Math Camp this year, Peg Cagle encouraged us to all “Phone Pocket”.  It is when you put your phone on audio record in your pocket for 10 minutest to record your conversations with students.  She said you can learn so much from this practice!  So you don’t get overwhelmed, don’t try to observe everything about what you say and do, but pick one or two things you would like to watch for when listening to the playback.  Then, blog about what you discovered.  Tell us what you do noticed, what you do well, and what you would like to improve.  It is due December 16th.   Submit your blog post here.  Then, you can start working on your  “New Year’s Resolutions!” blog post, due January 7th.

Blog posts appear in the order they were submitted. 

 

MTBoS SunFun Logo

Our topic for next month is, “Observe Yourself:  Phone Pocket”

Due: Sunday, December 16th   Submit your blog post here.

Helpful tips:

          • Submit your blog post (below) to have your post included in the weekly summary.
          • Tweet out your post!  Use the hashtags #MTBoS (Math Twitter Blogosphere)*, and #SundayFunday to get more traffic to your post.  This is especially important if you are new to tweeting because only your followers will see your tweets unless you include a hashtag.
          • Additional Hashtags:  Of course you can always add more hashtags to your Tweet so more people will be exposed to your post!  You can search any keywords to find a hashtag, and here are some of the more popular ones:
            • #ElemMathChat (Elementary Teachers)
            • #MSmathChat (Middle School Teachers)
            • #GeomChat (Geometry)
            • #Alg1Chat (Alg1 Teachers)
            • #Alg2Chat (Alg2 Teachers)
            • #PreCalcChat (PreCalc and Calc)
            • #MathChat
          • JUST  #PushSend!  🙂

Submit your post using the form below by Saturday at midnight! Just #PressSend

You can also click here to submit.

New to Blogging?

If you are like, “Wow!  This sounds like so much fun!  I want to blog but don’t know where to start!” then you must read “Mission 1: The Power of the Blog” on the Explore the MTBoS site.

** The hardest thing to do week after week is come up with great prompts.  Please help us out by telling us what you would like to blog about (or even read about) here!

* The Math Twitters Blogosphere is not an organization.  Rather it refers to ANYONE that is involved in MATH in ANY way!  You do NOT have to Tweet or have a blog!  But, you can find many teachers that do tweet and blog by searching the hashtag #MTBoS on Twitter.  All are welcome, no invitation necessary!  Please join in the conversation!  Just #PushSend!  

Thanks so very much to @DruinOK for getting this all started and Jessica,  @Algebrainiac1, for creating our awesome logo!

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Self-Care Tips

The topic for next week is “Group Work:  How Do You Make Group Work WORK?“.   Submit your blog post here.

Blog posts appear in the order they were submitted. 

 

MTBoS SunFun Logo

Our topic for next week is, “Group Work:
How Do You Make Group Work WORK?”

Due: Sunday at 6AM

What do you do for group work?  How do you make it work?   Submit your blog post here.

Helpful tips:

          • Submit your blog post (below) by Sunday at 6AM to have your post included in the weekly summary.
          • Tweet out your post!  Use the hashtags #MTBoS (Math Twitter Blogosphere)*, and #SundayFunday to get more traffic to your post.  This is especially important if you are new to tweeting because only your followers will see your tweets unless you include a hashtag.
          • Additional Hashtags:  Of course you can always add more hashtags to your Tweet so more people will be exposed to your post!  You can search any keywords to find a hashtag, and here are some of the more popular ones:
            • #ElemMathChat (Elementary Teachers)
            • #MSmathChat (Middle School Teachers)
            • #GeomChat (Geometry)
            • #Alg1Chat (Alg1 Teachers)
            • #Alg2Chat (Alg2 Teachers)
            • #PreCalcChat (PreCalc and Calc)
            • #MathChat
          • JUST  #PushSend!  🙂

Submit your post using the form below by Saturday at midnight! Just #PressSend

You can also click here to submit.

New to Blogging?

If you are like, “Wow!  This sounds like so much fun!  I want to blog but don’t know where to start!” then you must read “Mission 1: The Power of the Blog” on the Explore the MTBoS site.

** The hardest thing to do week after week is come up with great prompts.  Please help us out by telling us what you would like to blog about (or even read about) here!

* The Math Twitters Blogosphere is not an organization.  Rather it refers to ANYONE that is involved in MATH in ANY way!  You do NOT have to Tweet or have a blog!  But, you can find many teachers that do tweet and blog by searching the hashtag #MTBoS on Twitter.  All are welcome, no invitation necessary!  Please join in the conversation!  Just #PushSend!  

Thanks so very much to @DruinOK for getting this all started and Jessica,  @Algebrainiac1, for creating our awesome logo!

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Desmos Art Project

Last year I had my students create an art picture using Desmos.  I showed them examples from Desmos.com Staff Pics, Creative Art to motivate them and give them ideas.  My students loved the art they saw on Desmos, and were excited to create their own pictures.  They came to me outside of class to learn how to graph certain functions, restrict their graph, and color in their art.  It was a blast for me and a great learning experience for them.  I loved how excited they were about creating their art!  I have done this with students in Pre-Algebra and up, but you could change the project to make it appropriate for lower grade levels by having them graph only lines, or having them plot points in a Desmos table and connect them.

To keep all of their art projects in one place, I created a Desmos Activity Builder for the project.  Having them do the project through an Activity Builder helped me manage all of their graphs so I could easily view them and access them for help.  By using an Activity Builder, I was also able to include the instructions for the projects and helpful tips for them.  I used teacher pacing, and restricted the screens to 1 – 5 during the project.  After they finished the project, I turned on the “Reflection” slides so they could fill those out.

I had them print out their Desmos Art, and I made a huge collage of it on my wall in the back of the room.

My Activity Builder Includes:

  1. Project Instructions Screen
  2. A link to Learn Desmos so they can use more advanced equations
  3. Example screens that taught them how to restrict and color their graphs (and more) for them to examine and play with.
  4. A blank graph screen for their project
  5. A screen to describe their project
  6. Two “Reflection” screens for after the project was finished.
    1. What did you like the most about the project?
    2. What would you change about the project?

Screen Shot 2017-11-02 at 8.57.26 PM

Here is the work of the Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 students at my school.

Desmos Art

Desmos Art Collage on my wall!