Opening Day 2016

Our school has a unique way to open the school year.  On the first day, all classes have meetings in the morning in order for the administration to set rules, highlight critical policies, etc.  Then students and their parents come either in the afternoon or evening and experience a shortened schedule during which they go to each class for a 10 minute session.   I don't really think of this as the first day of school, but rather a "back-to-school" event.

The true opening day is the following day.  Students come for our regular Wednesday schedule (1:30 release time) and we dive right in.

This year, I teach advanced algebra 2 during first hour.  I talked briefly about some of the rules / expectations that I have.  The nice thing is that I had most of my students in geometry last year, so many of the expectations are already established.  I gave the students the Google Classroom code and made sure they were all able to gain access.  I also lined students up with their Pearson Realize login information and gave a brief tutorial on how to find resources inside of that platform.

Lastly, we had about 20 minutes of class time remaining and I wanted to get the kids a taste of what we're going to be doing tomorrow.  Our first activity tomorrow what we call the Garden Problem.  It is very much like the Visual Patterns tasks that you can see on Fawn Nguyen's site.  Luckily for me, David Cox and Desmos had an awesome activity created that I had students work on to finish class.

I had students work with their elbow partner to complete the task.  Overall, things went very well.  There is a lot of power in Desmos' ability to sketch on the screen.  Here is an example of one group's work.

I'm really looking forward to using Desmos again this year.  I feel Opening Day was a victory for the home team.

Algebraic Reasoning with Mobiles

This summer I had the opportunity to teach other teachers through the South Dakota Counts program.  I enjoyed working with teachers from around the state and learned a lot from them.

I especially like the resources that CAMSE kicks out each year.  One of my favorite resources that I gained exposure to is Math Mobiles.  These puzzle type challenges do a great job of developing algebraic and logical reasoning.

I did some searching for where I could my hands on some more of these, and thanks to a blogger by the name of JFairbanks , I found a site that not only had pre-made challenges, it also allows you to create your own.

Solve Me Mobiles

Here is an example (I recommend you check out the site and play on there):

Students are to find the value of each shape, assuming that the mobile is balanced and adds to the total weight in the top circle.

I'm excited to try some of these out on my students!

2017 SDCTM Conference Proposal

I just submitted a conference proposal for Jarrod and I to present at the SDCTM conference in Huron on February 3-4, 2017.  We are planning a two hour session where participants will explore the Desmos activities and activity builder features.

I held a Desmos training session earlier this summer at BHS, and since then Desmos has made some major changes and literally hundreds of new activities have been created.  I'm interested to see what else will change between now and February.

The NEED for High School Math Teachers to Be Integrating Statistics Into Our Classes

I attended a class last week @ South Dakota State that focused on deepening the understand of what the CCSS expect students to know in the realm of statistics.  The class was great for two reasons.  First, my statistics content knowledge needed some dusting off -- this class provided the cleaning.  Second, the class has really made me think hard about how our department can do a better job of integrating these standards into the lessons and activities that we're already using.

But most of all, I really started thinking about the NEED for students to be exposed to lessons in statistics.  The greatest need is for students to be made aware that they need to think critically when presented with statistics found in the real world.  I get the feeling that a majority of adults don't understand the different ways statistics can be manipulated to show different angles of the same story.  Just yesterday, I saw this video on CNN of an interview between CNN's Don Lemon and Sheriff David Clarke.  

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/18/us/wisconsin-sheriff-david-clarke-i-predicted-this/index.html

I'm not here to pick sides on this issue.  I don't follow politics enough to shed light on the data that Lemon is referring to.  I don't know if the President was lying about it, nor am I implying that he was.  I am simply using this four line discussion as evidence that there is a lot of gray area in the realm of statistics.  

What I do know is that there ways that statistics can manipulate the truth about what is really happening.  Students need to understand how things like sample size and random sampling can have an effect on data.  They need to analyze different data sets that hold relevance in their world, whether it be things such as shoe size, height, or average sleep time.  Students need to understand why the median is resistant to outliers.  They need to understand how we determine if a data point can be considered an outlier.  They need to see how graphs can be misleading.

All of these skills (and others) are needed in order for our students to be wise consumers of statistics.   I am afraid that many people hear statistics on the news or read statistics found in newspapers, but never really consider the process of how the statistic was created or how the statistic was represented and what message it is intended to support.

REMAST wrap up

A couple of weeks ago I presented a session about Desmos at the REMAST Conference in here Brookings, SD.  The presenter speaking before me was Matt Miller (@jmattmiller), author of "Ditch That Textbook".

I feel honored that Matt listened to my Desmos 101 talk, and also that he decided to take some of his famous sketch notes at the same time.  I would love to be able to sketch notes like this!

The Word about Desmos is Getting Around

The ISTE 2016 conference is currently taking place in Denver, and until today I have never heard of the ISTE conference.  It looks like I need to take a long look into this one for the future.

Based on what I'm finding on Twitter tonight, two gentlemen (Bob & Jedidiah) presented a session on Desmos today.  Two reasons for this blog post:

1. It amazes me what social media is doing to my personal professional development.

2. The word about Desmos is spreading like wildfire.

Last November, my colleague Jarrod and I attended the NCTM regional conference in Minneapolis.  We crudely estimated that easily more than half of people we talked to had never heard of Desmos (or simply thought that it was only an online graphing calculator).

That led us to feel the need to start spreading the word around our region.  This February, Jarrod and I presented a session on Desmos at the SDCTM conference.  Anywhere from 25-40 people attended our session.  Once again, the theme was many had never heard about Desmos or the Desmos teacher website.

Based on what took place in Denver today via Twitter, another batch of math educators were exposed to Desmos and here is what some had to say:

I couldn't agree with these folks more.  The word is out.  Desmos is revolutionizing the way we can engage students in our math classrooms.  I can't wait to see what 2016-2017 has in store for math education!

South Dakota Counts Instructor

Today begins my journey as an instructor for a class offered for graduate credit.  I am teaching a course titled ED 611: Algebraic Reasoning for K-12 Educators through the South Dakota Counts program.  I've experienced three summers of these type of classes as a student and I'm excited to be a part of the process again.

Nerves are present (like any "first day of school") but I am confident things will go well all week.