The FIRST THREE DAYS of Class

The First Three Days of Class

1. Parable of the two golfers

                    Click Here

2. Student Partner Interviews

Place students with the new Seating Chart.     Have students interview their new partner

Share out the interviews by introducing your partner to the rest of the class and answering 2 or 3 of the questions.

3. Partner List

This list will be used when are working in cooperative learning groups.  Click here to access it.  

4. GRIT Discussion

GRIT Video:  http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit?language=en

Take the GRIT SCALE Quiz:  https://sasupenn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_06f6QSOS2pZW9qR  or http://tinyurl.com/quizgrit    If you want to look at the questions again click here.  Or go to http://tinyurl.com/gritquestions

Read the article:  http://www.edutopia.org/blog/true-grit-measure-teach-success-vicki-davis?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow%20&utm_campaign=RSS

5. Brain Break

6. Estimation 180

How many Almonds in the cup?

Post your guesses at the site http://www.estimation180.com/day-6.html    or http://tinyurl.com/estimationday6

7. Desmos Sign Up

https://www.desmos.com/  

Make a design using desmos.  There is a lot of math involved here.  Use the help button for tutorials.  Here are some examples https://www.desmos.com/art

Spend at least 20 minutes trying to make a design.   Save and name your design. Get the url.  (use the share button) Post the url at

Period 1:  http://padlet.com/dsladkey/period1desmosdesign

Period 2:  http://padlet.com/dsladkey/period2desmosdesign

Period 4:  http://padlet.com/dsladkey/period4desmosdesign

Period 6:  http://padlet.com/dsladkey/period6desmosdesign

8. Google Drive Setup

Create your folders like this in your main drive…..

__School Misc

_Home Misc

_P1 Algebra 15-16

_P2 French 15-16

_P3 Anthropology 15-16

...

Clubs_Sports_Activites

Pictures and Videos

Z_Catch All

Color Them as you wish

_P1 Algebra 15-16

_Assignments and Projects

_Class Notes

_Important Class Stuff        passwords might be in here

Desmos

Geogebra

Pictures and Videos

Screenshots

9. Brain Break

10. “Digital Citizenship” http://www.edudemic.com/first-five-days-of-digital-citizenship-at-your-school/

Get in pairs.  Decide who is person A and who is person B.

Person A starts and asks Person B a question from below.  After the discussion, then person B asks Person A THE NEXT QUESTION and so on.  

• Who is responsible for the device – what does that entail?
• Discuss the idea of passwords and password literacies
• Decorating of devices?
• When can they be on social media and communicating with others?
• Consequences of off-task behavior in class
• Limits on personal work on device
• Charging of devices
• Hapara  http://hapara.com/

Pick a free space in the appropriate document below to give your thoughts on one or more of the above topics.

Period 1  Period 2   Period 4   Period 6

11. All are True Except One

Go to the Google Slides document below and make a Slide that represents you.  Make all the things you say to be true except one.

Period 1     Period 2      Period 4     Period 6

12. Differentiated Instruction

Dollar Bill Activity:  Invite someone to get the $1 from taped to the high part of the wall.  Then ask a person who can’t reach it to try to get it, then ask a taller person to get it.  Discuss the implications for this as we try to work together to learn more math.

Learning Style Quiz

http://www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-learning-styles-quiz

Meet with your favorite food partner and discuss the following quote.

Quote 1:  ” ‘differentiated instruction’ refers to a systematic approach to planning curriculum and instruction for academically diverse learners.  It is a way of thinking about the classroom with the dual goals of honoring each student’s learning needs and maximizing each student’s learning capacity.”

-Carol Ann Tomlinson and Cindy Strickland

Quote 2:  

13. Brain Break

14. Mindset Quotes  

CLICK HERE for QUOTES

Read to yourself the Mindset Quotes.  3 minutes.  Which one do you identify the most with.  Why?  Now meet with your group of 4 and have each person discuss the quote they most identify with.

15. Importance Order Smartboard Activity

16. SMARTBoard Rules Activity

17. Homework Expectations

http://www.socrative.com/

Use Socrative to get opinions on what homework expectations should be.  We will build the homework framework off of these.

18. Goals Google Form

Click here to get to the Google Form to submit your Goals.

Below is what it looks like.

8 Things I'll Take Away from the GafeSummit 2015

GAFE SUMMIT June 11 and 12, 2015 in Homer Glen IL

Here is the link to all of the sessions

1.  FAILURE IS A PART OF LEARNING.  We need to incorporate this idea into all we do as teachers.  We need to create activities that students don't feel like they have to get it perfect the first time.  We need to be honest and show our own mistakes and failures.
INSPIRED TO TRY:  Give my math students a chance to fail (try and try again) every day by these types of warm ups.    Estimation  Questions  Would you Rather... Thanks  @jamestsanders  presentation
MY FAVORITE:  Scroll down and see a few sites that students love.  http://www.classroominthefuture.com/that-exists/

The Dung Beetle helps us remember that out of the bad comes the good.

2.  GOOGLE FORMS   This is a must in my classroom.  It is easy.  It is fast.  All the responses are nested into a spreadsheet.  Here a  couple of new things I have taken away.  You can put conditional formatting into your response spreadsheet.  For instance:  when you have a survey of how students are doing and you ask them to rank it 0 to 5.  Then you can conditional format any cells color to be lets say RED.  That would alert you to students who have a hard time with the material.  TUTORIAL 
INSPIRED TO TRY:  Exit slips and consistent communication through Google Forms.  Also, I want to look into Move Note.  Thanks @JasonMMarkey

3.  GOOGLE DOC and GOOGLE SLIDE   If you are trying to give a document to someone else so they can use it on their own, in the url at the top of the document just change the /edit to /copy.   Tutorial   I also learned how to make a pictorial table of contents in Google.  Here is an example. Slides Thanks @jheil65

4.  PADLET.COM  Padlet is my all time favorite student interactive site.  This session confirmed that Padlet is the BEST.  Padlet is simply a public posting board that the technology doesn't get in the way.  Go to http://padlet.com and sign up today.  I have my students all have accounts too.  Thanks @HollyClarkEdu

5.  QUESTIONS.  We don't allow students to ask enough questions.  I learned a structure that will help my students to ask questions without fear.  I'm really excited to use this.  In essence, as a group of four have our students ask a lot of questions and just write them down without judgement.  Then we ranked the questions for relevance and importance independently (however, it was digitally collaborated through google docs)  Then have them rank them as a group of four.   It was an excellent process.
INSPIRED TO TRY:  I would like to begin a unit with this structure.  This will help my students to ask questions before we know anything, thus give more freedom in asking any that are coming to mind.  Presentation   Thanks @HollyClarkEdu 

6.  GOOGLE +    I signed up for google plus professionally.  It has a lot of features that are really nice.  I have more to learn.  Thanks for helping me get started @cchausis

7.  GOOGLE HANGOUTS    I learned a lot of hangout etiquette .  Most importantly, I learned how to mute when some else is talking.  I learned that Hangouts are not longer tied to Google +.  You can screen capture something for all to see for the hangout.  You can give a link from your hangout for others to join you.  Use this link to go straight to a hangout.  http://g.co/hangouts  And tons more.  More Info here. Thanks @AmplifiedIT 

8.  CHROMEBOOK SHORTCUTS:  I love shortcuts.  This one was fun.  I'm just learning my way around my new Chromebook so this was perfect timing.  Here are a few of my favorite Short-Cuts.

Screen Capture

Turn the screen 90 degrees.  This one is most helpful for teachers for when students are playing tricks on their friends.  

This opens up all the Short-Cuts.  

I took all of these shortcut images from the presentation from Adad Ocampo which was great!

Measuring to find the Slope of a Line

Slope is so cool.  But I have made it so boring in the past.  I don't want SLOPE to be boring.  So this is what I tried.  I took some blue tape and made a big line across the front of the room on the wall.

Starting the Lesson (we have not covered anything to do with slope yet)

Ask the question:  What is your guess for the slope of this line?  I had the students think about the question and talk with their partner.  Then I picked a few students at random.  Here are a few of their guesses.

The most interesting thing that came out of this was that some students wanted to know the rule before they guessed.  I then asked if anyone would like to share what they know about slope.  The rule of slope is the rise of the line over the run of the line came out.  Also the word steepness came out.  We did some discussing regarding the fact that the rise "looked" smaller than the run and how that might look with numbers and decimals.

Refine your guess:  I told them that all of their guesses were too high.   Someone also noted that the slope was positive.  So we talked about the fact that it had to be greater than zero.  Then I told them that since all the guesses were too high that m=1 was too much.  I asked them to talk with their partner and come up with a new guess.  Here is the second round of guesses.


Measure Yourself: We were definitely getting closer.  The discussion shifted to the equivalent numbers of 0.13 and 13/100.  Also 0.7 and 7/10.  I told them about the fact that you could measure the rise by starting at any point on the line and going straight up to any other point, and measure that.  Then the rise would be from that end point all the way across horizontally to the line, and measure that.  Now I asked that they come up to the line and actually measure the slope.  I only had half the class to this because of space.  The rest of the class were asked to be thinking of how and where they wanted to measure the line.

This first round of measurements came on with some amazing accuracy.  The slopes came in at 0.269 as the lowest and 0.3125 as the highest.  I thought this was spectacular.  

Also, I had one group that measured in wrist width.  They measured 4 wrists high and 13 wrists long.  This was an answer that was very close to the middle answers.   We used inches, cm, and wrists as our measurements.  I never told them what to use before the activity.   

By the way, I measured the whole triangle height over the width and got 67 inches over 210 inches.  So the actual slope turned out to be approximately 0.319.

The homework for the tomorrow is to measure the slope of 5 things.  Give all the measurements.  Take a picture if you need to.  We will see what they bring to class tomorrow.

Take Aways
Here are some reasons that I was excited about today's lesson.

1. Taking a guess at the answer helps students to try without the fear of failure.  It is only a guess.
2. Refining the guess helped them to continue to think about what exactly slope is.
3. They had to measure something.
4. They used different unit measures.
5. Today students were Active and Participating in learning Slope
6. We also compared multiple equivalencies.   0.5 was the same as 1/2 or 5/10
7. Learning a math concept always takes more time than I think.  This took 25-30 minutes.