High Fives

I just need to get this written down while it's still relatively fresh in my mind...too long to tweet about in any kind of detail, so this is "gonna" be a  little messy.

First Class:
We were going through our first visual pattern in my grade 9 applied math class (MFM1P1) a la Michael Fenton, with a couple variations...I keep the column of 5, and add columns of 3 each time which I find helpful when it comes to developing the equation intuitively.
eg: Stage #10 looks like this

After they draw stage 10, I ask them how many circles they used (32) and how they calculated their answer. If necessary I ask for a few different ways to come up with 32, until someone says "3 times 10 plus 2," which is what I'm pulling for.

Oh yeah, this post is supposed to be about high fives...so anyways, while we are making our table of values, J asks, "What about high fives?" Alright, I bite. I ask him, "What do you mean 'what about high fives'?" and he responds by saying that if there's two people, they can only high five each other, but then if there's 3 people, they can have 3 high fives. At this point I realize that, seemingly out of nowhere, he's asking about the handshake problem. (I love the curiosity and initiative, so I decide to run with it) Teaching Tangent Time: I say let's pause from our visual pattern, and check this out. I have J and another student stand up and high five each other, while I start recording the results in a table on the whiteboard. I ask another student to join, and for the 3 of them to high five each other....this continues until we have 6 students all high fiving each other, and the following table on the board.

I tell J "you have enough info to get started, try to figure it out for our next class," and we return back to our visual pattern as a whole class. BTW our grade 9s are one-to-one with Chromebooks this year, and I've got a fever for more Desmos :)

Next Class:

The first thing I ask J is if he's figured out his high five problem, but he says no. I anticipated that this might happen, so I had thought up a way for us to model this in class...walk off home runs!

I start with 1 student getting zero high fives in the corner of the class, and when the next student joins him in the corner, they get to high five. Then we add another student to the pair in the corner, and another, and another. As we add each student they start over trying to high five each other, and I record the results in a table on the board (like yesterday). By the time we have 6 students in the corner, someone complains that there's not enough room and we should spread out along the wall. Yes, yes we should!

Once the 6 are lined up I ask, "It took 15 high fives for all of you to high five each other, let's start there and count on as the next student joins and high fives each of you." Off we went, adding one student at a time to the group, counting on as they high fived everyone that was already lined up. I tried to hype it up like they are your teammates lined up at home plate after you just hit a walk home run in the World Series. The EA in our class is the best! She even stepped in as the DH for a student. Here's what it looked like:

Were they as excited as me? Nope.

Did it run perfectly? No way.

Was it an active way to model the "handshake problem"? You bet.

But most importantly, students discovered how the non-linear pattern grew. Maybe next class we will develop the equation, or try some counting circles.

Survivor: Coral Island - Week #2

Thursday: I placed two hidden immunity idols in the school, wrapped with a message explaining their use. In class we reviewed the rules of Survivor.

Friday: I left tree mail in the class with the instructions that someone is to read them aloud after the opening exercises. Apparently they struggled to make sense of what was written (I was trying to be cryptic), but they all made it to the gym for the challenges.
The four team names they came up with are:
Hufflepuff Honey Badgers (blue)
Ghosts (pink)
Immortals (green)
Delta Miners (grey)

This was my script and notes from the 75 minute period:

Record each component of the challenges, and tribal councils with an iPad.

Challenge #1 - Meet in the small gym (I used red font to highlight Jeff's repeated lines)

“Come on in, guys! Let's get to today's reward & immunity challenge. Here is how it's gonna work.”

2 players with one basketball have to make 5 free throws (4 basketballs-1 at each hoop), once both players are back at half, then the next 2 players can run over to the end and untie their 3 bags of puzzle pieces (cloth drawstring bags from outdoor ed - 4 different colours) tied to hockey nets.

The remaining 2 players then assemble their puzzle in the gym's center circle (24 piece puzzles from the dollar store).

*5 free throws were too many, next time I would cut it to 3 so that there wasn't a large gap between teams early on in the competition...made it stressful for the players still shooting.

FIRST 2 teams to finish win immunity and 1st also wins a reward, the others will go to tribal council where someone will be eliminated. 3 of the tribes had to sit out one player from this challenge so that the teams were balanced.

“I’ll give you a minute to strategize.”

“Survivors ready...go!”

Winning groups get team immunity idol/reward (the reward is clue #1 for a hidden immunity idol) and get to go read in the library, 3rd place team goes as well, but will be called back to vote after the 4th place team is finished. 4th place team, stay for tribal in the small gym. After elimination, individual student records a message to the audience. 4th place team then goes to the library, and the 3rd place team comes back for tribal council.

*I scrapped the idea of recording a parting message, just in case anyone was upset or angry.
*Ghosts finished first, winning immunity and reward, and Immortals won immunity with 2nd place.

Discuss the game, and encourage feedback from players:

"It is time to vote. You can vote for any other member of your tribe, even if they are absent today. You cannot vote for yourself, and you cannot spoil your ballot."

One at a time, everyone goes into the equipment room, and writes down the name of the person they want to vote out. As each player casts their vote, they are to hold the ballot up and record it with the iPad. Players can record a message to the camera if they so choose. eg: I'm sorry, or I'm glad it's not me.

I'll go tally the votes.Once the votes are read, the decision is final, the person voted out will be asked to stay, and the others are to leave the tribal council area immediately.I'll read the votes.

*Once the 4th place tribe voted off a player, they went to the library, and sent the 3rd place tribe to the gym for their tribal council.
*After the first player was voted off I asked her to stay and I quickly explained that each evicted player was now becoming part of the "crew" responsible for next week's Survivor challenges. Like the crew in the real game, they aren't allowed to divulge anything to the players.
*We had a tie, so they voted again, except the tribe members could only vote for one of the tied players (who were no longer allowed to cast a vote themselves).
*Victoria and Ellie were the first 2 eliminated from the game.

Challenge #2 - In the gym

Each team has 5 minutes to build the tallest plastic cup tower (4x50 red 16 oz cups, cloth tape measure). Players who sat out the last challenge can not sit out this challenge.

Top 2 are safe, 1st also gets a reward (Clue #2 for a hidden immunity idol. Tiebreak if necessary-stack cups back into each other)
*Same result as the first challenge...Ghosts won, and Immortals came second.

2nd tribal council (repeat the process described above)
*Ashton and Raegen were the next 2 eliminated from Survivor: Coral Island.

*5 minutes was too long to stack the cups...3 minutes might be better to get a balance of speed and strategy.

Eliminated students plan next week's challenges, and will record video during the class. With the footage they capture they will make their own "Previously on Survivor" 60 second summary trailer.

**The process went a little too long, and took the whole period. Tribal council was the slowest part where each person walks over into the gym equipment room to cast their vote so the remaining tribe members can't see or hear who they voted for. While each person votes, the rest of us sit there and wait...it's kind of painful.

Survivor: Coral Island - Week #1

This semester I've been having "Fun Fridays" with my grade 10 English class. Initially it was to encourage the students to read for their own enjoyment, and play games (to build our classroom community, get the kids working together, and learn more about each other through play). Last week I had the bright idea to try something different, and start playing Survivor in our class. I want to help students improve their oral communication, teamwork, problem solving, and use of technology through the game of Survivor as a media studies unit. Also, I am a fan of the show, and we are currently studying Lord of the Flies. To see if this is something I should go ahead with I bounced some ideas of a colleague, and he's helping me to get the ball rolling by figuring out how this could work. I took his advice and mapped out the rest of the school year to figure out how many people need to be eliminated each week so that this will work for my class of 32 students

Week #1

I went out and purchased 8 packs of Goody headbands* for about the same price as one actual Survivor buff.

*actual colours used are different than those illustrated.

This gave me "buffs" for four tribes (blue, green, pink, grey) and two other colours (cyan, purple) for if and when we realign the tribes into two teams. To prep for next week I'll need materials for the challenges, team immunity idols, and maybe a hidden immunity idol...or two.

This was my lesson plan to kick things off:

Day 36

Fun Friday, April 1

Read 8:50-9:20

Post the following in Classroom:

How well did you read? Complete the following self-assessment.

http://goo.gl/forms/F7yp3La75e

Are you enjoying what you are reading? If not, check out

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/teen/the-best-young-adult-books-of-2015/ for some inspiration.

PLAY Opening Theme while students are completing the survey.

Poll students to see who hasn't watched before. (3 haven't)

Watch clips from an episode of Survivor (finish Wed. assignment).

Cook Islands Introduction - Explain "tribes"

Cagayan Team Immunity - Explain "immunity"

Gabon Individual Immunity - Highlight the shift from team to individual play

One World Tribal Council - This is how you are eliminated from the game

Survivor: Coral Island

For a grand prize of $10,000 and the title of “Sole Survivor”

Here are your tribes: Get to know each other, we start playing next Friday.

Blue Green Pink Grey

Name your tribe, and create a flag with your tribe name and each player’s name (11x17 paper and pencil crayons). Post on the back bulletin board.

Closer:

Lord of the Flies influence

Week #4 My Lesson

Starter:

My grade 9 applied math class went something like this on Friday:

A number of students remembered the song from Sesame Street and I'm hoping they all understood the concept. One student was a being a smartass, so I ran with it, and we checked each of the plates to make sure that there was only one with 3 cookies.

Next, I put this up on the board, and asked "Which One Doesn't Belong?"

Almost instantly someone said "They grey one," but right away someone else argues "It could be the hexagon too," and the discussion begins. I have the students explain to me why each one of the shapes doesn't belong, and when their logic was flawed, another student was pointing it out before I had to. The obtuse triangle was the most challenging, but they figured out a reason that they could agree on: exactly one obtuse angle.

To set them up to try this task independently, I had them fold a blank paper into fourths, and asked them to reason why each one of the following doesn’t belong.

They worked on them for a few minutes, and then we took them up together, and I focused on reinforcing the appropriate language eg: increasing, negative, direct, origin, quadrant, intercept, etc. I'm looking forward to using these for our math starter as we move from linear relations into algebra, and then into measurement & geometry.
*Next class I think we will try Desmos' Polygraph:Lines to further build their vocabulary.

Activity #1:

SolveMe Mobiles 

- login to save your progress

- create your own and challenge someone else

After they were all connected and had a chance to explore, we went through an example on the board to highlight the various features: weight, balance, pencil, and success. Initially, I thought they would have been ready to move on sooner from the SolveMe Mobiles, but for those that found it easy, they were eager to jump ahead to harder levels, and create their own massive challenges. I let them run with it, and instead of moving on to the next activity I decided to save it for another day.

*Students needed the whole URL to access the site on the iPad, if you left off /Mobiles they weren't able to connect by pressing play.

Closer:

This was not in my original lesson plan, however when a student suggested we should play Kahoot, I said "Sounds great." I had planned on closing with a problem in honour of 100s day for the last 10 minutes of class...but I'm flexible. Many of the students remember bringing in things like cheerios, and stickers when they were in the primary grades, yet they hadn't done anything in recent years. While they were playing with Mobiles, I found a suitable Kahoot for us to play that was all about 100. It was a fun way to wrap up class on Friday, and a couple of the questions were quite challenging.

*This year I have been using Knowledgehook Gameshows in math class rather than Kahoot because A: They have premade questions that match my curriculum, and B: The scoring is better since it emphasizes accuracy over speed.

My Favourite Problem

Hands down, the following is my favourite problem from this school year.

I put this up on the IWB for my grade 9 applied classes, and after a brief discussion they had their problem:

When will he be able to use his iPod again?

Assume the picture was just taken (10:45 am, January 5, 2016). Off they went to work on the vertical non-permanent surfaces (VNPS) HT @alexoverwijk in their visibly random groups (VRGs) via Superteachertools HT @fawnpnguyen.

Plenty of great discussion and learning about units of time, and rates. We ended up with a few different solutions, but were any of them correct?

To be honest, I doesn't matter if anyone was correct, it was just really fun to see the vast majority actively engaged in problem solving. Bonus learning: Days in each month, days in a year, weeks in a year, "what's a leap year?" and what to do if this ever happens to you.

*This blog post was created entirely on my iPhone. 

A Day in the Life: Week One 2016 Blogging Iniative

Prologue: Get the three kids fed, dressed, and out the door. On Thursdays, I drop Layne (age 6) off at her bus pick-up and then take Owen (age 2) to daycare, while my wife takes Xander (age 3.5) to preschool on her way to teach Grade 8.

Xander gets a sweet mohawk when he goes to bed with wet hair.

Period 1: This is my prep and it started by getting involved in some conversation about the failure of the new bridge over the Nipigon River. One thing led to another, and off on a math tangent we went:
Bill showed me a pic of concrete barriers weighing down the bridge, shared this article about the bridge with me, and asked what what can you do with this? #WCYDWT It was a fun little discussion, and he told me later that he asked his grade 9s "What if it were students instead of barriers? How many people would they need?" After they solved the problem (2200 based on the average weight they chose) a student argued that it wouldn't work because the people would be require too much space and therefore be spread across the bridge...lot's of potential for fun there.

Back to work. I spent the balance of my prep working on creating the exam for my Grade 11 College English class. Comic books! Okay, a little background first...I've been using Chromebooks with my classes a fair amount this year because they are fantastic, and allow students to leverage the Internet, but with a big screen and a physical keyboard. (the only legitimate complaint I 've had this year is that you can't play Minecraft on them. So my plan is to allow students to write their final exam on the chromebooks if they choose to do so. I'm creating an original exam that won't be easily "googleable." This year we've studied a variety of texts: fiction, non-fiction, short stories newspaper articles, blog posts, TED talks, an audio book/e-book, podcasts, movies, television, and a graphic novel. To align with the themes of survival and crime that we studied, as well as connect to Indigenous culture, I'm using the legend of Windigo as the content for the sight passages. I remember Windigo appearing in comic books with Wolverine , and yeah I totally nerded out with a throwback to my childhood. I'd already found the legend (thanks Denise), and an non-fiction story, but I wanted to include the elements of a graphic story as well. Thanks to Amazon and a little googling I found out that the comic books I remember from my youth (1991 to be specific) are now available online at comixology.com.

Period 2: Grade 9 Applied Mathematics. This is the third year my high school has been running full year grade 9 math and English, while all other courses are sequestered. To accomplish this the students alternate days between English and Math, so as a teacher I get to teach this course to two different groups of students. I'm really enjoying this format because I get teach two sections of a course but with a night in between to reflect and revise. This was my lesson plan and how things went.

A: Collect “Star Wars: The Dough It’s Makin”

This was a really fitting problem for the students work through in this course, and the context is great. Students didn't have enough time in class to finish, so I had asked them to complete it for homework...bad idea, only 1 student had it finished. I think I'll go through it with the class as part of our mid-term review next week.

B: Starter - Graphing Stories - Elevation

This was the third graphing story that we've used, and the kids are engaged. I showed the clip once (pausing before the answer was revealed), had the students label and scale the y-axis, then played it again for them before asking them to sketch their prediction. After a couple minutes I played it again (pause), and then circulated around the class to see what they've come up with. I then asked a student to come up and sketch their graph on the SMARTBoard, because they had drawn a really good graph. Then we watched the answer to see how their graph compared. This led to some really good observations that the answer is flawed...I loved it.

"The hill can't be that high."

"It drops too quickly."

"He wasn't at the bottom yet."

To wrap it up I have them use a coloured pencil to add the "correct" answer to their graph before returning their starter folders to the bin.

C: Review - 2 rounds of Knowledgehook Gameshow! *To access the gameshows we played you need to register for free first.
Round 1: Rate Ratio Proportion

To make my midterm review more interactive I decided to play this with my class. Check it out, it's like Kahoot for math, but I like the scoring better since it values being correct, and submitting an answer way more than just being fast. We played the first round together using their phones, ipods, and the set of 5 Chromebooks I have to use with my class. After each question I would quickly break down the answer on the board, with the students providing me direction. As we progressed it was great to hear the students realize they got it wrong even before we revealed the answer, just by reflecting on what they had chosen. It also felt really good when everyone answered a question correctly. However, when we only progress one question at a time as a group, fast responders can start to get restless waiting...so before we started the second round I gave them this prompt.

• Can you upload solutions from your device? Try it out.

Round 2: Linear Relations #1

For the second round the kids stayed engaged, and they tried out the "upload solution" feature by taking selfies, choosing something from their camera roll, or grabbing a pic off the internet (yeah, John Cena made an appearance). One of my students had uploaded cow pics, and when I asked her about them after class I learned a lot more about the student's interests. For this quiz the uploading wasn't about the math, it was about them learning to better use Knowledgehook, staying engaged, and for me to learn more about them.
D: When done: Continue working on  2016 Problem

We never did get to this, but they have it in their starter folders to work on if they finish early. They have until February 1st to continue working on this problem from the Math Forum. I really like this problem because it is so open, and it really gets them to play with the math.

Lunch: I usually spend lunch in my class working on stuff, but today I ended up visiting with an EA for a good chunk of the hour. I was helping her with solving systems of equations, and then we ended up talking about student apathy, travel plans, PA days, and more.

Period 3: Grade 11 College English. Students were working on their culminating activites (autobiographies) after we did a little bit of exam review, and had our comfy seat draw. I'll have to write about our comfy seat draw story in another post once we are finished. I'm loving the bookable class set of Chromebooks we have to use for these kinds of wrting actiivites. They're light, fast to boot up, and when combined with Google Apps For Education they're powerful, yet easy to use. Towards the end of class I was discussing their upcoming "20 Time TED Talks" with a student, and they told me that "they didn't really know anyone." This hurt. :'( It really hit me that I failed to create a classroom community for these students, and this is something I NEED to work on with my classes.

Period 4: Grade 12 Workplace Mathematics. Students were working on part #2 of their culminating activity which is to renovate our classroom. The task required them to figure out how many gallons of paint are needed to repaint the walls, how much carpet is needed to redo the flooring, convert their paint calculations into square meters, convert their flooring calculations into square yards, and then calculate the total costs for the products they chose. One student asked about a worksheet with measurement information that I hadn't returned yet (area of growth for me), so I reminded them that we have the world at our fingertips with smartphones and Chromebooks, and we should use them as tools to help us with these types of problems. It was great fun to watch them up and out of their desks, exploring the room, struggling with tape measures, helping each other, and struggling with the task. It was challenging, since our classroom is like a rectangular prism, but with a corner cut out, and a beam that separates two different ceiling heights. We did manage to break one tape measure, but so far that's our only casualty. On the downside, I've really struggled with a couple students motivation in the class, which was once again evidenced when they submitted the following as their grocery list. The task was to plan a meal for 15 people with a budget of $40, and this is what they came up with:

Epilogue: After school I went home to meet my daughter and get her ready for swimming lessons. On the way to the pool I grabbed "Tim's" (coffee) for my wife and I to enjoy for a 20 minute visit while we watched her swim. Then time to pick up the boys, go home, start supper, play trains downstairs. After Layne and my wife get home we have dinner, cleanup, playtime, baths, and then some screen time for the kids. I played Redball 4 on the tablet with Xander while Layne was texting her Grampa to make plans for the weekend. (She uses my wife's old iPhone 4, no SIM card, just wi-fi). Then after we've got the kids get tucked into bed for the night, I head back to school to finish up my English exam, and plan for the next day. Once I'm finished I head home, have a snack, proof my exam with fresh eyes, read some tweets, and then call it a night.