Barbie Zipline and a Rain Delay

A huge shout out to John Stevens and Andrew Stadel whose terrific blog posts made this activity possible. I highly recommend checking out their work first, if you haven't already. Also, thanks to Mrs. B-V who ran this with her Grade 8s at a different school earlier this year, then shared some feedback and a video with me since I couldn't be there to join them. Unfortunately, the Grade 7/8 class I did the Barbie zipline with was at a school that doesn't have a second floor classroom or balcony that we could access. To make the zipline more accessible than using the flagpole we scaled it down a bit and decided to give the students a choice between using the top of a backstop, or swing set as their launch point.

The Setup:

Following John's lead we tried to set the hook by introducing the activity with a zipline video from Nepal. It didn't get the "OOOHH"s and "AAHHHH"s that we were aiming for, but the kids were engaged, and more importantly it sparked curiousity and conversation about ziplining and what would make it fun. Click here for the presentation file we used. After a quick overview of the handout, we headed outside armed with clipboards, pens, a few fiberglass measuring tapes and a goal of designing:
1. A zipline that would be instant (certain) death for Barbie.

2. A zipline where Barbie might get stuck or lack the thrilling experience.

3. A zipline that’s just right so Barbie goes from point A to B at a safe (but fun!) speed.

Here we gave students the choice of where they wanted to setup their zipline.

Me: "How high do you think the swings are? (Crickets) No really, make a prediction. How far do you think it is from the bar to the ground?"

Students: "10 feet?" "18 feet?" "Nah, that's too high." "15 feet." "3 meters." "5 meters." "Hey this is like Estimation180!" "We haven't done that in a long time."

Me: (heart sinks)

Students: "4 meters." "More like 3.5 meters." "12 feet, it's like double your height."

Me: (smiling) Lets find out!

The swing set came in at 10' 9" and the backstop was an even 12'. We did measure in meters as well, but none of the groups chose to use the metric system.

Part #1:

Once they knew the heights they were off measuring, with their partners, how far away the zipline should run for it to be boring, fun, or disastrous for Barbie. Going purely on intuition most of the students had a pretty good idea of what would and wouldn't work. When it came time to calculate the length of the cable needed for the zipline, those that knew the Pythagorean theorem were good to go, and those that didn't were given support as needed. As for calculating the costs, we decided to drop the budget restriction and scaled back the cable costs in an attempt to address a couple of the bugs Andrew had mentioned. It was a beautiful day to be working outside!

Homework:

Students: bring in a barbie doll or other action figure

Me: pick up the equipment needed and enough "cable" for each groups ideal zipline.

I went with mason's line for the zipline, 3/4" pulley, carabiner to connect the zipline to the launch point, conference lanyard for a harness, duct tape to dress Barbie and strap her into the harness, GoPro Hero2 to record each run, one-wrap velcro to strap the GoPro onto Barbie, and a binder clip to use as a release.

Part #2

Before we went outside to do the trials, everyone got their Barbie/figure/stuffy harnessed up, measured and cut the length of line needed, and tied a loop at each end for the carabiner to hook onto and to hold at the end of the run. We went with 2 pulleys and 2 carabiners so that as the first group was getting hooked up, the next group was getting their line ready in an effort to keep things moving. Luckily, we hit some poor weather last week, and were forced to delay the the trials until Friday. The reason why it was good luck, is because I caught this conversation Thursday on Twitter.

This got me thinking...how would we decide which ziplines were really fun? Hello emoji rating sheet! As each pair tested their zipline, everyone rated the ride on a scale of sleep (stuck on the zipline) to medic (crashed hard). Although it's still subjective, it worked for us.

The Results:

Everyone got involved, and we had fun! After each group tested their zipline we returned to class to consolidate and assess which length made for the best possible run. As a whole group we discussed which emoji represented a great run, but we had a 2-1 split between excited and scared. To determine the score for each zipline we totaled the number of votes they received that fell into either of those categories. To wrap up and extend their thinking we left them with the following next steps:
1. What if we wanted to launch Barbie from the 110’ communication tower, how long should we make the zipline to be safe, yet fun?
2. How far away from the base of the tower would we have to anchor the end of the zipline?
3. Design a method to get barbie back to the top of the tower without someone having to climb back up.
4. Design a braking or stopping method that we could use for the tower run.
One of the students has volunteered to compile and edit the footage to make a video which I'll add to this post when he is finished. Until then, here is a clip from one of our runs.
*Update: Video of all the ziplines posted here on YouTube

Now if only I can convince admin that we need to test the student designs from up here on the communication tower.

Epic Bungee Barbie 2015

For a detailed description of the Bungee Barbie lesson you can Google it, or better yet check out the blog posts by MTBoSers Matt Vaudrey and Fawn Nguyen.

Hands down this was my favourite math activity from the past 6 years. Essentially, we just took the Bungee Barbie lesson and made it huge!

The grade 8 students had done the small trials, created their equations, made their predictions, and prepped the Barbies by stringing together a LOT of elastics to make their bungee cords. Then came the big day where we were able to test out their math.

I have to give a huge shout out to Jordan for launching all the Barbies, and for creating the following video of our afternoon. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wcYhJCECqc 

Next time I want to ask this as a follow up or extension:
Assuming Barbie is a 1/6 scale doll, where would this rank amongst the world's highest bungee jumps?

Back to Blogging: My Students Write And I Should Too

No excuses. It's long overdue that I dedicate some time to writing my blog* (Why does "blog" show up with a red squiggly underline as if it's misspelled? Right-click blog, select Spell-checker options->Ask Google for suggestions and then choose "Enable").

Problem solved, everything is awesome! HT Peg + Cat. Okay, I'm done with that tangent, but I do enjoy going off on them, and I want my students to as well or at the very least help steer our class in different directions. This is part of the genesis behind today's blog post.

Wednesday, in my period 3 ENG3C (English, Grade 11, College) class I tried a 5 minute writing activity that I hadn't used since the last time I taught an English course...or maybe was during my student teaching placement, either way it was a long time ago. Each student wrote "This morning on my way to school..." on a piece of paper and then the fun began. I told them:

You will have 60 seconds to continue writing the narrative, and then you will pass the paper to the person behind you, with the last person in the row bringing their sheet up to the first person. Once the sheet has been passed, you get another 60 seconds to read what the person in front of you wrote, and then continue their story. This will repeat 3 more times so that each person in your row will have contributed to the story.

Poor planning on my part by waiting until the end of class to do this, so we didn't get a chance to share after everyone had finished writing.

On Thursday I started by asking my students what they thought of the 5 minute writing activity from yesterday's class. Those who responded were positive, yet critical, which made me smile and it went something like this:
Student - We didn't have time to read them.
Me - We can start earlier in the period.
Student - I didn't have long enough to write after reading everyone else's stuff.
Me - Excellent point...how can we fix this?
Student - Add 10 seconds.
Student - No, 30 seconds.
Student - That's too long.
Me - How about we increase each round by 15 seconds?
Student - Yeah, that should work.

Off we went with an improved version of this creative writing activity. I had them start with "On my way home from school..." while I set the Google timer on the SMARTBoard to 1 minute. Ready, set, go! For the next 8 minutes I watched as the students scribbled furiously across their pages. What amazed me the most were the sounds: The scrawling of the pens and pencils, dee-dee-dee-dee of the timer, the shuffle of the papers being passed, a few chuckles as they read, and then back to the scrawling. All I had to do was add 15 seconds to the timer, and then start it back up. I did provide one additional prompt at the start of the last round that they were the last writer and they should try to wrap up the story.

At the end of the 5 rounds I asked them to pass them one more time so that the original author could read where their story had gone. There were quite a few laughs, a number of puzzled looks, and some questions about what had been written. I then asked for volunteers to share...and it was very entertaining. Some were written well, others were not, but through the sharing and discussion a number of important ideas were brought out. We talked about what worked well or what didn't. We highlighted something from each shared piece whether it was dialogue, lack of fluency, effective description, or a happy ending.

Would I do this activity again? You bet. However, I would start with the caveat that this is meant to be a piece of fiction, and they are not to write about other students (to limit the risk of anyone being bullied). Adding 15 seconds each round worked much better for timing, and sharing the stories afterwards was a great way to get more students to share "their" work orally.

As for my class, they have some ideas on how we could make this even better:
1. Make it a whole class story, which should take most of our 75 minute period. While the class is reading, writing and working on other stuff, one person starts our story by writing for 60 seconds (self-timed), then they pass the sheet on to someone else. The next person reads what has been read, and they also write for 60 seconds before passing it on to someone else. By the end of class everyone should have contributed.
2. For our next round of comfy seat draws*, the first winner has to write one paragraph of a story during class that day. Whoever wins the following day, will read what has been written, and then add their own paragraph. So that after 28 days we should have quite the class story.
*A random name is drawn each day to see who gets to sit in the leather chair or loveseat, and they can invite up to 3 people to sit with them. The winner's name is removed from the pool, and do this each day until everyone has had their name drawn to complete the cycle.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

A visual summary of our travel today.*

Automobile ☑️ Train ☑️ (sort of)

Plane ☑️

Plane ☑️

Plane #2 ☑️ (Thunder Bay to Toronto)

Bus ☑️

Train ☑️ (which was fantastic!)

Automobile ☑️

Team building with eLCs ☑️
 *All times are EDT

eLC Road Trip (Technology Enabled Teaching and Learning)

Prologue

To kick off my eLC travel adventures last week I decided to head to Shebandowan Lake Sunday evening, since I had a Monday morning flight booked out of Thunder Bay. The solo drive was pleasantly uneventful and it gave me a chance to listen to a number of TEDTalks podcasts on my iPhone. The one that resonated the most with me was David Grady: How to save the world (or at least yourself) from bad meetings.

Feb 9th

Well rested and enjoying a cup of coffee at YQT from Tim Horton's who, by the way, had shot a commercial in my town late last year.

I fired up my laptop in an attempt to take care of a few items in my inbox. Since I was going to be offline for a couple hours I stashed a math article into iBooks that I had been emailed, knowing it'd give me something to pore over during my flight. I also Tweeted this in an attempt to make visible what lengths some of us go to in our attempts to juggle home and work.

Your flight from Thunder Bay to Toronto leaves at 10:40 am. What time would you wake up in Fort Frances to make it on time?
— John Gibson (@jgibson314) February 9, 2015

On my way through security I was randomly selected for the full screening which meant I was given the choice of either a full body search or getting scanned in the tube...cool! I've never been selected for this before so I chose to try out this scanner thing, and to be honest I was really let down. After the scan, the security agent summoned me out and told me to look at a screen which didn't show anything :( I guess I was anticipating a Total Recall kind of full-body skeleton x-ray. While in the air I had time to "read" the youcubed math article and compose a response by way of blog post on my iPhone. The rest of the day was spent planning SeLNO,  connecting with other eLCs from the North and coordinating the TELT school visits for the next day.

Feb 10th

I felt very privileged to spend the day in the HWDSB enrichment program's learning space led by Zoe Branigan-Pipe and Beth Carey http://360.io/rP6xeb. What impressed me the most, even more than how comfortable and inviting the class felt, was how integrated the use of technology was for the learners. While everyone was getting connected, one student was happy to teach me some cool online tricks like Google Gravity, and how to customize the Google homepage with code (which he learned "just by messing around"). Once the students had access to the class Google doc via "The Hub" they were off to the races, researching, reading, and discussing what they learned about the oil sands as "local global citizens" in preparation for their debates. The process of how they developed their team's position was fascinating as they bounced back and forth between creating their arguments independently in a shared document, and working together to organize and critique what they came up with, which included assessing the validity of information from various webpages. Setting up the shared document as a table so that each group member had their own cell to compose in was an excellent strategy to keep content organized with simultaneous authoring.
Although the room was littered with examples of various other forms of technology, from a turntable to tablets, from Legos to a Makerbot, it was apparent that these tools weren't what drove the instruction, rather it was that the technology was used to foster their inquiry. Having an extended period of flexible time (other than using the gym) with the students, allowed for the teachers to go much deeper with the student learning rather than trying to fit everything into a specific schedule or bell pattern.


Feb 11th
Rather than going deep with one class, day 2 was an opportunity for me to experience a wide variety of Technology Enabled Learning and Teaching from SK to grade 8 at two different schools. On our way to Dr J Edgar Davey Elementary School we leveraged our connectedness to social media and picked up a coffee for our gracious host ;)

I'm having an @shareski moment: T-6 minutes until the eLCs arrive, & I spill coffee right down my shirt. #GoodJobAviva
— Aviva Dunsiger (@avivaloca) February 11, 2015

The first room we were in was an excellent demonstration of a variety of iPad apps with a small group of ESL SK students. The students explored letters, sounds, pictures, and stories independently and as a group with the support of the teacher. What I really liked about the apps was that they gave the students instant feedback. For example, when drawing letters they had to be constructed from top to bottom (something that is/was a struggle for me), and if a student was having difficulty it was easy for the teacher to see this and then provide support as needed.

Next, we observed a grade 5 math class of which I have mixed feelings. Not about the class itself, which was fantastic, but about the effective use of technology in math. Personally I prefer DOING math using pencil and paper, where I can quickly (and messily) sketch, scrawl, and revise my thinking as I struggle though a problem. I find drawing and writing to be much more challenging on a device which then makes the problem solving process more time consuming, as well as limiting to creativity. However, we did see some ways that the technology can be a huge asset, like when the students who were using Explain Everything recorded their voices to describe their thinking as they solved the problem, and then submitted a digital copy to their teacher. I guess my ideal math class would be a blend of high tech (sharing work, recording thinking, Desmos) and low tech (pencil & paper, concrete manipulatives).

After the nutrition break we went into Aviva's grade 1 class, which I have already enjoyed visiting daily through her Twitter feed and blog posts. The biggest takeaway for me was how fluently she used technology to document both instruction and student learning. Snagit was used to record the rich discussion with the class at the SMART Board surrounding their structure problem, iPads captured their progress in pictures and videos, then through a mix of Twitter, WordPress, and YouTube all of their learning is shared with the world. In her reflection about the day Aviva came to the conclusion that "maybe the most valuable 'resource' that we have in the 21st century classroom is 'time.' with which I wholeheartedly agree.

Anne and I then ventured off to Ancaster High School to join a few other eLCs in a couple intermediate science classes. I was really curious to see what a school of 300 grade 7 & 8 students with BYOD and a 4-1 ratio of school devices would look like, but to be honest it was very similar to what we have going on in a few of our schools. I spent some time talking individually with students as they worked on their labs, and it was Google Drive that seemed to be the most valued tool for the students. Using it meant that students always had access to what was going on in their classes (even if they were absent), it allowed students to collaborate at school or abroad (unless they are visiting a country that filters Google), and it was an easy way for them to submit their work.

To cap off the day we were treated to an open discussion with a group of students about the use of technology in their school. It was interesting to hear them offer solutions to most of the problems that we encounter as we become more reliant upon being connected to the internet and our devices. Some of their suggestions included:
-printing off study notes before tests
-store vital content locally on the device as well
-continue printing and handwriting as a skill
-read books to gather information
-take time away to detach yourself periodically from your devices
-develop social skills like being able to have a face-to-face conversation
-students will take more ownership if devices are 1-1 instead of shared
-for some classes technology isn't always an asset eg: math work
And like most of the teachers I know, their biggest technology request is for faster, more reliable internet access.


Epilogue
Well my journey home Wednesday evening didn't exactly go as smoothly as my travel to Toronto. After bypassing the massive security line thanks to my Nexus card :)

I grabbed a bite to eat and charged up my phone. En route to my gate I checked the board only to discover that my flight was going to be delayed by a couple hours. After FaceTiming (is that a word now?) with my wife and kids I decided to try and make the most of my time at YYZ by having a little fun on Twitter with what I could discover in the airport. I also found a unique Estimation 180 problem, and finished recording the video I needed for my moving sidewalk math lesson. The next morning, on my way to Atikokan High School, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to stop and snap this pic as the sun rose over the height of land hill.

Even though I had a terrific experience in Hamilton, it felt great to be heading home.

Youcubed, Fluency, and Basic Facts

One of my colleagues forwarded me a link to Jo Boaler's Youcubed article Fluency Without Fear without any indication of his viewpoint regarding its content. I really appreciate an unbiased sharing of information when the person believes it is worthwhile. Whether it's "holy cow, this is the coolest thing ever" or "can you believe this garbage" or more likely somewhere inbetween, personal comments can poison the readers opinion especially when coming from a higher tier on the organizational chart. So please, if you haven't read the article, click the link and do so before reading the rest of this blog post. Technically, I didn't actually read it to begin with, my iPhone read it to me.


At first listen, I had somehow developed the misconception that the article was saying the learning of basic math facts was not necessary to develop fluency, and that it was causing anxiety and fear in early learners. I was mistaken. After rereading the article I would say that this line best summarizes her stance: "Teachers should help students develop math facts, not by emphasizing facts for the sake of facts or using ‘timed tests’ but by encouraging students to use, work with and explore numbers."


I am a big fan of Jo Boaler's work with growth mindset in mathematics, and I agree with much of what she says about the need for developing number sense, as well as the memorization of facts not being what math is about. Check out Maths is not special for more about this last idea.

However, I strongly believe that the recall of some basic facts can be immensely valuable when learning mathematics which supports Boaler's statement that "mathematics facts are important." Specifically, addition up to 10 + 10 and multiplication up to 10 x 10 comprises some of the knowledge needed to be fluent in number sense. The author illustrates this when she admits that she doesn't "stop and think about the answer to 8+4", and in each of the cited 'number talks' multiplication facts of up to 9x10 are used as building blocks in solving the more abstract computational problems.

There are numerous analogies between learning English and learning math, so I'll throw my hat in the ring and start at the beginning with counting. Even before my daughter could recognize numbers, she was able to count, much like how she learned to talk before learning the alphabet. I like to think that learning her ABCs was akin to her learning to count from 1-20, and by 10s to 100. As she learned to read by sounding out words, she needed to be taught that c-h makes a "ch" sound, whereas in math she learned that 2-3 makes twenty-three. Likewise I think of sight words as a corollary for basic facts. As a budding reader she could sound out the word "choose" every time she saw it, but eventually she progressed to the point where it became a sight word for her. In math, when she was given 2+3 she was quite capable of counting to get the answer, but eventually she saw this as one of the "ways to make 5."


Ultimately, I think all math teachers would agree that we want our students to develop a solid grasp of the "basic facts" without scaring students off of learning mathematics. Maybe for some, myself included*, rote memorization works, but for others we need to be willing to patiently use other strategies.**


*I still remember learning my times tables in Mr. Bradley's Grade 4 class (6 x 7 was my nemesis) as well as how to write a cheque, fill out deposit/withdrawal slips, and doing enrichment with patterning.

**Feb.14 Update: Kyle Pearce illustrates this at http://tapintoteenminds.com/2014/04/13/memorizing-multiplication-tables-hurt-help/