Class Activities

10 Tools in My Teaching Day

by Jon Orr

Looking to stay productive? Wonder what tools are out there to keep organized? I’ve tried a lot of tools, apps, websites over the last few years; some I kept using and some I tossed away. Here are the 10 tools that I use on a regular basis in my teaching in a video blog format!! If video is not for you scroll below to read the transcript.

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This was my first go at a video post and I would love to know what you think. Think I should keep doing it? Think I should stick to just text? Let me know in the comments below or send me an email. For real, I would love your feedback!!

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My Favourite Desmos Feature

by Jon Orr
If you follow me you know Desmos is my go-to software for graphing and calculator functions with my students. I'm pretty excited to let you know that coming soon I'll release a 3 part video series on using Desmos in the classroom to enhance classroom discussions. To get started I wanted to share my favourite Desmos feature: The Moveable Point Watch the 1 min 44 second video: Can't see the video? Click here to see the post page. Sign Up below to get notified when the 3 part series goes live. You won't want to miss it!! p.s. Here are the activities seen in the video. The Great Collide Charge: Edited Sugar Sugar Pondering Percent Pentomino Puzzles Or You can also download the free Multi-Touch Book from iBooks to use on your iPad Beautiful Functions  

Gaining Insight

by Jon Orr

As the year closes down I think back on 2017.  I was curious about some of the stats on this site and was blown away at some of the numbers. I never thought that when I started sharing what goes on in my classroom that I would have over 150000 views in a single year! Amazing….and thats all because of you! I dug a bit deeper and found the three most popular posts from this year.

  1. Angry birds Parabolas
  2. Flippity Flip Bottle Flip
  3. Spiralling Grade 9 Math

At first glance I thought, “Yeah, those top 2 posts make sense. Their kinda gimmicky and fads. We search for those relevant topics our students are into; games and bottle flips! I’m sure if I wrote a post on fidget spinners it would be up there too.”But after thinking back on those activities and comparing them I think both their value come from being able to gain great insight into student thinking. And it’s that ability to assess our students deeper thinking here that teachers are drawn to.

Take the Angry Birds lesson for example, the creativity that is embedded  throughout the lesson is everything. Students get to choose how their flight paths look and act. There’s a story behind every arc they put into their activity. Their thinking can’t help but spill out all over, and I get to use that knowledge I gain to help push them along. Take away the angry birds and you still have a great creative lesson.

Replace it with a drawing, or trace of a picture or even a marble run and students experience the exact same creativity and learning goal expectations. The activity still allows me to have those insightful conversations.

The bottle flipping activity is a formative assessment gold mine. Again take away the bottles and replace with paper balls or card tossing and this lesson is identical, and I have just as much success at seeing into my students thinking.

It’s this insight that we all want. It’s this insight we need. Insight allows us to what Kyle Pearce and I have been calling ignite our moves. Seeing how a students thinks in live time allows us to act. We may act to address a misconception. We may act to push learning further. We may act to plan our next lesson. We may act to change our planned lesson into something that the students need at that moment. Lessons that allow insight into student thinking must be our norm.

This fits with the 3rd top resource. Spiralling Grade 9 Math. The file found on this post give us a day-by-day to teach with lessons just like the ones above. Not gimmicky lessons —  Lessons that spark curiosity! They are lessons that provide great insight so I can ignite my moves and fuel my students sense making. And fuelling sense making has to be our main purpose.

Have you used any of these resources? Comment below to share how?

3 New Desmos Activities: Talkers & Drawers

by Jon Orr

Goals of the activity:

Students will:
  • Begin to recognize characteristics of linear, quadratic, or periodic functions.
  • Generate a need to use proper vocabulary around linear, quadratic, or periodic functions.

Specific recommendations:

  • The “talker” cannot use their hands and should keep them behind his/her back. This will help the student be careful and direct the language they choose to describe the graph.
  • The “drawer” cannot talk.
  • Set a time limit. Possibly 3-4 minutes for the “talker” to describe the graph to the “drawer” with the goal to reproduce the graph.
  • Consider having all the “drawers” reveal the graphs at the same time for dramatic effect.
There are three different versions of the activity based on topic
Links to the three activities:

What the student experiences:

Once students choose a role tell them “Talkers, your goal is describe the graph perfectly to the drawer. Drawers, your goal is to listen carefully and without talking try to match the talkers graph. You will have 3 to 4 minutes for each graph.”
When the time is up, tell all the drawers to click the REVEAL button at the same time to see how close your sketch was.
 

What the teacher experiences:

While students are describing and sketching take time to listen to the words they use. Store these words for later in the class so you can link them to the proper names.
Example: 
You heard Jose Adem Chain say, “The pattern starts at 2 and goes up…” If most students are using the phrase “starts at..” We can introduce the term y-intercept.
Or on the periodic function version:
A student might say, “…it does that and then repeats 4 units later” You now have a gateway into introducing the period of the function.
After each round use the Teacher View to showcase some student graphs to the class.
Consider restricting the students to the current sketch and move from sketch to sketch as a class.
Last question.

The words generated on this slide will most likely be informal. As a class discuss the informal use of the word and then introduce the more formal words relating to the topic.
Inspired by Brian McBain and also the team at Desmos