We had only 50 minutes. I let the kids group themselves and then choreograph their own part of our fraction song. I gave them only ten minutes to make props. It was the coldest day of the year so far (and the windiest). But, in only 50 minutes they designed, rehearsed, and even preformed their rendition of “The Fraction Song” for me AND the 2nd and 3rd grade students at our school. I was as blown away as many of their signs on this windy day! I’m working on the iMovie and will post it when finished! Until then, here is the YouTube of my creative, adorable, sweet, and enthusiastic students. I love 6th graders.
2012 was the best year I have ever had professionally. I started my third year teaching middle school, and do not have a new prep or new book for the first time ever in my entire teaching career. This (and some bonus planning time in our new schedule) has freed me up to improve my existing lessons and actives, as well as create some fabulous new ones. I feel more inspired (and effective) as an educator that I ever have, and I look forward to getting better each year! This year would not have been as fabulous without the support from so many amazing math educators that I connect with on blogs and through Twitter.
My Favorites of 2012
Favorite Professional Development:
Twitter Math Camp (TMC) tops my list of my very favorite thing of 2012 (if not of all times!). Professional development for us, by us. Thanks Lisa and Shelli!
Global Math – Continuing in the TMC theme, this internet conference keeps me in touch with real teachers and helps me learn multiple new things every week. Thanks Megan for all of your hard work on this!
MathTwitterBlogosphere – I love this incredible site created by @samjshah that introduces newbies to tweeting and blogging with fellow math teachers.
A Day in the Life – I love that this series exposed how much teachers do in a day! Thanks Tina (@crstn85)!
Personal Favorites:
Having Dan Meyer include my blog in a post on “Great Classroom Action”. Dan was one of the very first math bloggers I found when I went back to teaching. He helped me immensely and taught me what it means to share my ideas with other teachers freely! I feel so honored to be mentioned on his blog.
MS Sunday Funday – I had no idea how amazing it would be to connect with other middle school teachers. We teach the same topics at the same time, so having them in my GReader is pure gold.
Barbie Bungee Activity – STARTING with a project and then teaching students the math as they need it is the way to go. They actually care because their answer matters – if they don’t want to kill Barbie that is! Plus, they just get it when they experience it first. Seriously, it does not get any better than this!
Getting over 3,000 hits on my blog in one day. For so long I barely got three hits a day. I don’t live for the stats, but I love helping other teachers and this shows me that I am doing that!
My wonderful friend and teacher, Rachel, started a truly inspiration blog for teachers called “One Good Thing”. It is a compilation blog where different teachers post the great stories about their day! Just reading these stories can lift up any teachers spirits! She explains the concept best in her “About” statement on her blog.
“We are dedicated, fascinated, hard-working, inspiring. We teach. Our days are challenging. Some are great; some push us to the breaking point. Every day may not be good, but every day there is (at least) one good thing worth sharing. Here are our stories.”— Rachel —
Today I blogged on “One Good Thing” about my students singing the quadratic formula song. I hope you enjoy this blog as much as I am!
This is my first time ever coaching a math club. I have wanted to start a math club since I began teaching at my school two years ago. However, as I went from teaching high school to middle school, all of my preps were new to me and I just didn’t have time. I finally decided this year to start an official middle school math club. We meet about once a week at lunch time. It has been a lot of work for me, but I think it is amazing fun! My math club students are very eager to learn advanced math concepts and they love competition. I even bought buzzers!
At the last math club we talked about quadratic equations and parabolas, and I showed them the quadratic formula. I played a quadratic formula song for them and we sang it a couple of times. Quadratic equations are pretty…
The Barbie Bungee iMovies are finally finished! Barbie Bungee was my favorite activity of all times. There is nothing more exciting then seeing seeing if your Barbie is going to come crashing to the ground. The students learned so much and we ALL had a blast!
I’m not an iMovie expert, but I learned much more about it by making this movie. The text moves way too fast – I wanted stationary text but it kept cutting it off. My students told me they would help me with that. They are only 12 years old, but much better at iMovie than I am! I love them.
I told them they could make an iMovie if they wanted to – totally optional. Three students made movies. I have put them all (and the movie I made) here. Enjoy!!
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 290,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 5 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!
I know that many people end up their units with a cool, hands on activity. However, I decided to start my Linear Equations unit with one. This was easily the best activity that I have ever done with my students. And, I believe they learned more from it than any other activity.
I saw this activity on Fawn‘s blog, and have wanted to try it ever since! She has a wonderful write up of all of the steps, and even a worksheet that I used (and it is hilarious) so I recommend you go there next to get more information on this. NCTM illuminations also has this in their resources, and it is good to read as well, but I liked Fawn’s version better! I took both lessons and then put my own spin on it, and am hoping to extend it for our study of equations of lines.
I put my students into groups of three and four and then showed them these two You Tube videos. They both are excellent and serve different purposes. One video illustrates how thrilling it would be to bungee jump from the highest place possible. The other video (on Land Diving) illustrates how we DON’T want to hit our heads and even talks about how important the length of the cord it.
I then told them that they were going to create their own Barbie Bungee Company. I had them brainstorm to come up with a company name and their company goals. Our school is heavily invested in project based learning and I have found that students are much more invested in any project or activity if they come up with the objectives.
Fun names were picked like “Barbie Daredevil” and “Extreme Sky Bungee”. My students had very realistic goals. They all wanted to make more money than their competitors by giving Barbie the MOST thrilling ride, without killing her.
After this was established, I passed out Fawn’s worksheet and they got to work dropping Barbie from 0, 2, 4, and 6 rubber bands. I encouraged them to drop her several times from each and record each drop to get greater accuracy. Some groups listened and some did not. They did not yet realize the importance of accuracy. I would let them drop her from no more than 6 rubber bands to get their line of best fit.
At this point I added from Fawn and NCTM’s lesson in order to more thoroughly analyze their lines of best fit before the big drop. I am go glad I added this part as it ended up being the part of my lesson where the most learning occurred. Our final Barbie Bungee was going to be a drop from 160″. However, I first wanted them to use their line of best fit to do a “test drop” from the ceiling of my classroom, at a height of 94″. We talked about “market research” with businesses, and how important testing from 94″ was before we went to 160″.
I had each group make their prediction of how many rubber bands they would need to safely drop Barbie from the ceiling. This information needed to be kept TOP SECRET so that the other groups would not steal their companies ideas. They really got into this and my usually loud group work classes were full of excited and hushed whispers.
During the test drops, only one groups Barbie had a very thrilling ride (close to the floor without hitting) the first time. Most groups either hit the floor or were not close enough to the floor. I sent those groups back to the “prediction” drawing board. This is where most of their line of best fit learning took place. They knew they either needed to add or take rubber bands away. However, I had them look at this on their graph so they realized their line of best fit was off. Only after they adjusted their line of best fit, would I let them retest. I emphasized that they should not be guessing how many rubber bands to take on or off, but predicting the number by adjusting their line of best fit.
After they readjusted their line of best fit and made a new prediction, I let them test again. Most of the groups were much more successful on their second test drop. I had them measure how far Barbie came to the floor so that they could add this new data point to their graph. At this point, some groups noticed that she fell further than they had predicted, and slightly adjusted their line of best fit again.
Next it was time to make their predictions for the 160″ drop! I had told them that they would be dropping Barbie 160″ but did not give them much instruction when they were creating their original graphs. Therefore, some groups had to redraw their graphs (or add more paper) to extend their graph to 160″. This was an excellent learning experience as well! After they made their predictions, “locked it in” on a sticky note, and added the rubber bands to Barbie, it was time to do the big drop!!
The big drop was very successful and EXCITING. We videoed each drop – and their excitement as well as the things they said were priceless. The You Tube playlist is at the end of this post. Only one group had a major Barbie fatality. Two of the three groups were very, very close and we had to drop her several times to make sure that she hit the ground. One group is still in heated contention. I love it when they argue about the math! Two groups dropped her dangerously close to the ground without hitting. It was a thing of beauty!
After we dropped our Barbies, we went back in to analyze the math. I had them enter their first 5 data points (for the 0, 2, 4, 6 and test drop rubber bands) into an Alcula linear regression website. This site was GREAT as it graphed their data, gave them a regression line, and then let them enter rubber bands (x-axis) to see how many inches Barbie would dropped based on their line. This was when the real magic happened. When the closest group entered their rubber bands, the math returned 159.4″. They were thrilled.
The day after the Barbie Bungee was the last day of school before Christmas break. So, I gave them the option of using the videos we took of Barbie Bungee to make iMovies. All of the students jumped at that! Two of them even finished their iMovie in class. Some of my students are very skilled at iMovie! As I get more of their iMovies, I will post them back here. This was completely optional for my students. Some some added more details, and some focused more on Barbie’s exciting drop! I had two groups ask me if they could do a Powerpoint or Prezi instead since they weren’t great at iMovie. I love that they wanted to do any of it! I plan to make my own iMovie – if I can find the time. I am sure it will not be as clever or inventive as my students movies however!
For the next step I am going to use these graphs to explore what each piece of their regression line really means. Hopefully, they will understand what a y-intercept is because of Barbie’s height and realize what the coefficient with x means because of the inches they were trying to reach with added rubber bands.
I had each of them answer reflection questions on a Google Doc. The questions included asking what they could have done to have a better drop and what advice they would give to next year’s students. They had great advice! Here are some of my favorites.
“For next year’s students, I would tell them to be very careful when graphing and drawing their line of best fit. They should have fun, but be diligent with their work at the same time.”
“I wish we could have redone our graph more accurately. Make sure to be organized, and keep all supplies and papers together. You also really need to follow directions and stay on task.” (This group had the major Barbie fatality).
“Do not rush to finish first, take a good amount of time to guess 94” and 160” because the guesses is what Barbie’s fate is based upon.”
“We could have used that website and then we would be more accurate. Take your time when drawing the line of best fit and measure right.”
“To be more accurate, we could have done more test drops and used more exact measurements when Barbie was bungeeing. Test your barbie several times and go through all of the math 2 times just to check for any math errors.
Ah, my son started his own blog. He blogged about making chicken pot pie with me. (I told them they could pick their favorite recipe and I would teach them how to cook it.) I didn’t even know he blogged about it. Boys CAN be sweet! 🙂
Yes, it’s Monday. Wednesday night I attempted to upgrade the software on my computer to Mountain Lion. After a few hours, all I had on my Mac was a white screen with an apple and a spinning disk (and spinning, and spinning). After five calls to Apple care over the next few days, my computer would not load. Word to the wise, Mountain Lion install is buggy, period. Contrary to what the Apple representative told me on the phone, I was NOT the only person to have an unsuccessful upgrade. On Sunday (the only day I could get an appointment) the Apple store was FULL of people who, like me, had unsuccessfully tried to update to the new Mountain Lion OSX. WHY does Apple lie to us? It’s not like we aren’t going to find out the truth when we are sitting with tens of people with the same problem at the Apple Store. And, why couldn’t they help me over the phone instead of sending me to the store? At the store, I wasted more of my time having a technician “fix” my computer. The fix? They had to wipe my entire computer. I could have done this myself, from home, and saved so much time. Thank goodness for Dropbox as I didn’t lose any files. However, it is such a pain to reload all of your programs, email, and account settings. Thanks Apple, LOVE the upgrades! 😦
Back to this week! It’s time for projects and project based learning! Sorry for the delay! Please enjoy the links below.
I had to call in sick last week for the first time in 2 1/2 years, and I wasn’t even sick! My poor baby boy had the stomach bug, so I stayed home to take care of him. I haven’t used sick days in the past because there is nothing I hate more than being absent, and mostly because of the dreaded sub plans. I had my lessons all planned the day I had to call in sick last week. But that did not matter. Because it still takes forever to type up what you do in your head all day long, for a substitute.
Luckily, my 7th graders are in the middle of a Google Presentation Word Problem Project. They are all creating slides and writing word problems in a single Google Presentation. I was out, but I was able to see then work and conference with them the entire class period from home. It was fabulous! And, I didn’t lose a day of class. To learn more about it, please come to Global Math Department “My Favorite Ideas” tonight at 9pm EST. I’m going on right at 9:05 – so don’t be late!
I Speak Math 