Nets and Forums

I worked with Math 1 to do what ultimately was a review of Surface Area for a lot of them.  First thing I did was hand out a bunch of cardboard boxes and asked them "How much cardboard was used to create this box?".  It worked out OK.  I was expecting a little bit more involvement with it, but it didn't generate the interest that some things I've tested out.  Not to say that it was bad at all, just wasn't as involved as I'd hoped it would be.  I'll probably have to change this one up a bit next time around, but I'm not completely sure what I would do differently.  I'll have to think on it a bit over the summer.  Different shaped boxes perhaps (they were all rectangular prisms this time around)?

Second thing up for the day was to hand out the standard printed net drawings of a few prisms/pyramids and have students find the amount of paper used.  Check over their work and then have them decorate/color them and put them together.  Some of them got really excited about it and really did well.  Others looked like they'd really rather just have a worksheet or something similar.  I always wonder if that's just a normal thing or if eventually I'll be able to find some way to reach those kids that don't want to do anything that even seems like work.  This was a really fun thing to do for a lot of them, though, so I think I will do it again next year (with some small modifications in terms of time and shapes).  I'm going to put these up around my room and use them when I run into a problem of a student confusing a pyramid with a prism.  Plus it'll add a little color to the place.

Thirdly, got a forum set up for my high school for a few teachers to see if people would find that interesting at all.  I figured that it would give people a bit more of a chance to see opinions written out and let everyone have a bit more of a voice than at PD time.  Not that the PD we do is a problem, but I often feel like I'm a bit crunched for time and wish that I had days to talk about the things that are brought up.  Perhaps this way we will have a way to do that.  Only time will tell whether this idea is embraced by the staff (or even part of it) or if it's something that just falls by the wayside.  Fingers crossed that it gets more discussions going about grading and tech in the classroom and more involved lessons!

Log War Cards

After the Bacon-Wrapped Workshop I figured I should probably start up a blog.  Partly so that I could connect to fellow educators more, but mostly so that I could get lessons checked over before doing them and (hopefully less often) digging through the wreckage of a failed lesson to find out what happened.

So here goes.  "Hello World".

First one I'm going to test out is actually one that I found on a couple other blogs previously.  I've had my Advanced Math class create Log War cards.  I also had them glue them to manila folders and then cut them out so that they'd be a bit more stiff and not as see-through.  Even had a student tweet about it, which was a really cool thing.  Unfortunately, the power shut off halfway through, so we didn't get a chance to play the game, but we got them all created and set aside so that we can play through it a bit on Monday.  I'm curious if it would be interesting (or motivational) to do a bit of a round-robin style tournament.  Also wondering if I have them make their own logarithms (that evaluate to a certain set of values) that they then take and use against other students may force them to think about it a bit harder as well.  Things to try next time around?  The only concern I'd have is the ones that flat out don't get it (though I guess I could have them just use my pre-made ones at that point and just have them figure out what all of mine evaluate to).