Warm-up

Miki Sudo ate 48.5 hot dogs in just 10 minutes setting a new record.  How many hot dogs did she eat per minute?

Warm-up

Joey Chestnut holds the world record for eating hot dogs.  He consumed 75 in just 10 minutes.  How many did he eat per second?

Notice, Wonder, and Notes.

I've been wondering how to set up things like "What do you notice?"  "What do you wonder?", Three Act Tasks and other activities so my students can do part of the activity at home and finish it off in class.

  I decided that for most things I might use the notice and wonder for, it is possible to send a photo in the packet with a chart for students to write their observations on.  The results can be turned in when students arrive for school.  

The photo might be of a real life application of the math topic we'll be covering in class or perhaps its one they've done before but need to review.  

This is a great way to introduce students to warm-ups for instance by sharing the picture from Estimation 180 with the notice and wonder questions and then have students make their guesses during class.  If I included a hint, students could include their estimation with their finished work.  

I can do the same type of thing with the three act tasks by providing a photo of the situation, any information needed and ask a few questions in preparation for the second and third act.  If the first act is a video, I can let the students see the question before I show the video and then show the video just before class ends.  Then I'll include the picture and the questions as part of the take home packet so students can record their answers.  There are lots of three act tasks one can find on the internet, it just takes a quick search for the answers.  

Then there is the activity called "Which one does not belong?".  This is where a picture with four things or terms is put up and students have to decide which one does not belong and then explain why they chose what they chose.  The sets usually have at least two answers to this question or more depending on how a student works.  The site WODB has so many possibilities a teacher can use.

On the other hand, it might be possible to set up certain situations and rather than using the mathematical language associated with the task, make the language simpler so students are more engaged.  For instance, I might include a picture like the one to the left and ask students something like "Wow how do  you describe the pattern used by the artist to create the print?"  or  "How many ways could fold this so it folds exactly in half?  It would also work as a notice and wonder.

All of the above can include some sort of notice and wonder activity in preparation for finishing it in class.  This allows students a chance to think about things before they do it and one can use so many different resources for this. 

A second area of activities one can include in the take home packet is to include those algebraic logic picture puzzles.  The ones where you might have heart + heart + heart = 27.  The second line might be a heart + heart + a square = 22 and the third line would be a heart + square + circle = 20.  So using the first one students figure out the heart has a value of 9,  the square has a value of 4 and the circle is worth 7.  This type of worksheet requires students to think about how the pictures relate to numbers and find the values.  

The next topic I'll be exploring is how to teach students to take notes from the book and use examples in the book to learn to do problems on their own. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.

Unique Version Of A Hybrid Model.

We just received word that the first couple weeks of school will be distance and then around mid September we are switching to a hybrid model.  In our model, the kids will be divided into two groups so group A will attend on Monday and Tuesday while group B is in school on Wednesday and Thursday.  Then for the other days of the week, I am expected to send work home to complete and be turned in when they come back for the next class meeting.  It is possible this will change before I have to set foot in class.

The sending work home part makes our hybrid model a bit different than the usual because the normal method has some face to face mixed with an online component. The district chose to do take home because many of our students do not have enough internet to watch multiple videos or complete online activities.  Since this schools model is a bit different, I'm having to make a few adjustments to standard model.

The in person section will require me to focus on key ideas and concepts so I make sure the students have at least been exposed to the material while designing the take home assignments to be completed independently or with little help.  Consequently, I'm having to  rethink the course structure so I meet the needs of all my students while covering all the course concepts.  I also have to look at how I'm going to assess their work to meet district requirements.  

One recommendation I've seen is to allow time for collaboration in a hybrid class via discussion boards, etc but that won't work for take home.  Instead, I can divide students into pairs so they can call each other with questions or work together to complete the assignments.  In addition, I can make small adjustments to the take home part of the assignment to encourage collaboration.  For instance, I can create pairs assignment where each student has different problems but the answers are the same.  If their answers do not agree, they can work together to see where the mistakes occurred.  This type of collaboration also allows students to participate in discussions because they have to communicate the steps and where they or the other person goofed.

 

Unfortunately, my students will not get the same amount of practice in class with only two days of in person meetings so I am going to provide practice with the take home.  I am taking two different activities and modifying them for students.  The first is to write out all the steps to solve a problem but leave the numbers out so they write in the numbers and the answer.  I only put in the operations and lines between steps.  The other is to write down all the steps except the last one for a few problems, then take away one step for so I've done all but the last two, then take away one more line, and continue until they are doing the problem all by themselves.  

As far as assessment goes, I will be including some actual problems for students to do totally on their own and without my guidance via the worksheets.  It would be more like a quiz and I do not plan to record a grade unless it is done well.  If there are mistakes, I plan to return it to the student to make corrections so the grade is higher.  Those three days at home will give time for students to make corrections and turn it in.  I am thinking of asking them to identify the mistake they made in the original problem. To help with error analysis, I plan to send home problems that have been done incorrectly for students to practice on but we will do some in class at the beginning of the year so students learn how it works.  I am still working on how to give tests so I do not have to give up the limited face to face time so I might be giving take home tests or including test questions as part of the homework assignment.

I don't know how this will work but I am starting to read up on ideas of things that could easily be sent home in paper form for my students.  I am also thinking about how to have videos available for students so they have them at home.  That is one of my next things to figure out.  I'd love to hear from everyone. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.

Sites To Help With Distance Learning.

I just heard the school year at the moment will be by distance for the first few weeks of school and then it switches to dividing the students into two groups.  One group will attend on Monday and Tuesday while the other group is coming on Wednesday and Thursday with no students on Friday.  That could possibly change because our town just reported it's first case of the coronavirus.  We'll have to see if the person who is a non resident infected anyone else. 

There are several sites I fully recommend using for distance learning. These sites are in no particular order, I  have used them and like them a lot because they make learning more active.

1.  Edupuzzle - This site is great because it has lots of videos that have been curated and those that you can curate.  By curate, I mean you can take a video, shorten it if you want, add questions that are open-ended, multiple choice or even add in notes.  When ever you add in questions or notes, the video will stop and require students to answer the question or read the note before it moves on.  If you don't feel like doing it all yourself, you can use an already curated video.  Another nice thing is that if you use multiple choice questions, Edupuzzles will automatically correct and assign a grade to the watched video but you have to grade the open-ended ones.

Furthermore, the site allows you to access videos from YouTube, Khan academy, National Geographic, TED talks, Veritasium, Numberphile, and Crash Course.  In addition, it allows you to cut, do a voice over, or add questions for any video on the site.  These voice overs, notes, and questions turn the video experience from passive to active so they are more involved with their learning.  The last thing this site has going for it is that you can log in using a google ID and you can export scores to google classroom.

2. Thinglink - This site allows links to be embedded into a picture or a video for students to follow as part of their learning.  This site has a free version, a paid version for up to 60 students, or the version for school districts that have everything.  This allows you to login with a google ID and it connects to google classroom.   What you end up with is an interactive picture or video containing everything you want students to learn associated with the top.

There are many completed Thinglinks you can go through or you can create one for yourself. Creating one is not that hard as the site has some wonderful tutorials and help.  I did a picture based ThingLink in a very short time. I just needed to select an image from my computer, start adding tags which are where you place the link, text, image, or video for the student to experience.  Then it can be assigned and students work their way through it. 

3. Hyperdocs - This is a site where you can learn to create one document that is set up with engage, explore, apply, share, reflect, and extend.  It is interactive google document designed for students to work their way through the document rather than giving them a ton of worksheets.  The authors of this site wrote a book on HyperDocs, offer some free training, along with samples, and templates. 

Hyperdocs is like providing a map of the instruction for students to work independently through a topic. It has it broken down into the first thing to do, then what comes next, and next, until the student has worked totally though the lesson.  Each section allows the teacher to create a link to all the resources needed by the student for everything from start to finish.  This is a wonderful thing to use for distance learning because it puts everything in one place and the whole document is around one to two pages long.  So it is short and manageable.

These are the sites, I recommend to begin with if you have to look at starting the year using distance learning.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.

Warm-up

If a humpback whale weighs about 66,000 pounds as an adult, how many tons does it weigh?

Warmpup

If a whale can swim 19 mph, how long will it take the whale to travel 9800 km?