Category: Geometry

Choose Your Own Adventure, Geometry, Google Forms, Solving Equations

Choose Your Own Adventure *Updated*

Mandi

A lesson is only as good as the updates you make. This activity, which I first blogged about here and here, came from Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller. I love this idea and now use it as an alternative assessment activity. Please go back and read how this started for me.

One reason I love this activity so much is because it gives students choice and freedom of topic, they become the teacher so they learn the content more deeply, they peer edit which is a very crucial skill, and this year I added a Flipgrid component in collaboration with another school.

I have updated my planning documents a little. They are posted on the posts, but this will be the most up-to-date document I have. I have also created a Google Slide presentation so very little teacher direction is needed. Another update I made this year was to increase the level of peer editing. Students do not intuitively know how to do this, so I updated the document so they have a little more guidance. Lastly, and probably the most exciting part for me, was creating these CYOA stories for a sister class in another district. We sent them our completed stories and then each student left feedback via Flipgrid. We’ve sent our stories to this district before but having video Feedback through Flipgrid was amazing and meant a lot more for my students.

I’ve included some fun examples from this year. I encouraged my Geometry students to create circular images as part of the story.  You can check the links above for examples from previous years including some Algebra 1 examples.

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Including the Flipgrid responses from our sister school was an amazing addition. My students loved seeing the faces and hearing their reviewers. It also made the audience “authentic” to them. We did get permission from their parents for my students to view them but we did not include releasing it publically so I can’t share the link to the grid. I’ve included a screenshot of the grid below.

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You can find a link to my resources below.

Planning Guide – 2018 CYOA Scoring Guide-Algebra

2018 Choose Your Own Adventure Planning Guide-Geometry

Slide Presentation – CYOA Planning Guide.png

Student Peer Review Document – 2018 CYOA Scoring Guide-Algebra

2018 CYOA Scoring Guide-Geometry

Here is an example of a peer review. In my experience, you need to model this for your students. I have, in the past, peer-edited my own story with the class so they see what to look for.

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Please give credit to Matt Miller and me if you use this idea. It has been a fabulous learning experience in my classroom and I look forward to the next update!

 

 

Geometry

Geometric Town Project

Mandi

This is a culminating project that we do in Geometry. It was originally created by a colleague of mine who has since retired. It has gone through many revisions over the past 6 year. I love that it reviews parallel line angle relationships, equations of lines, properties of quadrilaterals, perimeter & area and equations of circles. Not to mention it allows for some student choice and creativity. I’ve posted the most recent update and some examples of student work. Students create the map of a town using the specified guidelines from the town planner.

Project Link

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This is a wonderful end of the year project to tie in with previous knowledge. I hope you can use this in your classroom.

Cross posted on Mathmathnotsuck.wordpress.com

Geometry, Google Drawing, Google Slides, Trig

Measuring height with Trig

Mandi

I started to share this project with someone the other day and realized I had never written a blog post for it. We have used this project for quite some time and I love the digital aspect having students label their image and explain their process. We have the students make the clinometers but we give them little guidance as far as the project goes. We want them to problem solve and figure it out. We simply tell them to go measure something bigger than they are. I also limit their travel to school grounds (I did have a student go to the nearby gas station once. You have to be specific!!) I had a group of students last year that forgot their tape measure so they measured in shoe length (yes, I had a one-shoed student outside) and then converted that to inches when they came inside. I love the thought process behind their solution!

Not only does this give purpose to the study of trig, it also gets students outside and working together. It also helps students understand angle of elevation a little better with concrete examples.

I love the first one. She wrote a word problem for her image. Hmm… might have to steal that idea!!

I’ve included my clinometer document (I did steal the image from someone, sorry whoever you are!) and my scoring guide.

Trig Project Scoring Guide

GuideBuild a Clinometer

Happy measuring! Concur Bitmoji

Geometry, Google Sheets, performance task

Popcorn Containers and Volume

Mandi

Anytime you can have food in class it’s a good day (unless you are the custodian sweeping up popcorn. I’m sorry!) I came up with this project probably four years ago. We did the whole pour the water from a cone into a cylinder thing, and it was ok, but I wanted something better. While eating popcorn at the movies, my daughter and I started talking about the cost of the popcorn and the sizes available. Putting those two ideas together, this project was born.

The first year I had students create a cylinder and then figure out how to make a cone with the same base area and height. This was a struggle and I ended up showing them. It does involve a lot of thinking and many would not have gotten there on their own. The following year, I created a hand-drawn example of how to calculate the dimensions of the cone. I now have the information in Google Slides for students to use.

There are great discussions about the slant height becoming the radius of the cone. I do have to show students a visual of this and they are always amazed. Once they see the visual and we discuss how the circumference of the cone piece has to meet up with the base circle, they begin to see how it all fits together.

I’ve included the activity for the first day. I’ve popped trashbags full of popcorn and I’ve popped microwave popcorn. If you can get your concession stand to open up their popcorn machine then you have it made.

Popcorn Container Activity

As a follow-up activity, I decided to have students calculate the cost and the amount for which they could sell their popcorn. This allows them to make some decisions about which container would be best. Many of them tell me that it doesn’t matter which one is the best deal because the cone of popcorn would be inconvenient. 🙂

Popcorn Surface Area & Volume Follow-up activity

PopcornEnjoy!

Bitmoji, Geometry, technology

Bitmojis in the Classroom

Mandi

Hi.png

If you’re not familiar with Bitmojis, YOU ARE MISSING OUT! It’s you in an avatar with a ton of different sayings and situations. It’s an app you can download (iOs & Android) and a very user friendly Chrome extension.

It is fun, but it also has a TON of applications in the classroom. Since it integrates with Chrome so well, you can drag your bitmoji into most Google Apps as feed back for students.

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Sometimes my students leave me “suggested” feedback through Bitmojis as well. a

I recently used Bitmojis to enhance my Superhero Transformations activity for Geometry. It was a HUGE hit!

This idea came from a discussion with the AMAZING Sylvia Duckworth. I’ve included her slide deck full of ideas as well. My example is on there but so are a ton of other amazing examples of how to use Bitmoji comics.

Here is the example I gave my students. We also had a quick exploratory lesson about how to transform the Bitmojis through the arrange menu (or 2 finger click or key command) and a quick lesson on how to crop and mask images.

Superhero Transformations.png
Click on image to make a copy

I was even more impressed after my students submitted their projects.

Example 1     Example 2    Example 3   Template to create your own (make a copy to edit it)

I created some examples for my non-math friends when I presented this to my school. How about a comic in a foreign language, or a political cartoon?

Now if you are a fan of Snapchat, you probably already know that Bitmojis are sticker options inside of it. You can also send “together” bitmojis in a message.

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me & my daughter

Tara Martin shared her idea about using Snapchat and bitmojis with book selections and a new hashtag was born – #booksnaps. You take a pic of a book selection you like, annotate & add your bitmoji. Read about it on Tara’s blog here.

booksnap-example

And if you don’t want to open the world of Snapchat in your classroom, this can be done through Google Drawing or Google Slides.

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A quick disclaimer on Bitmoji, there are a few that are not school appropriate. This isn’t any different from anything else you find online. Talk to your students about using Bitmoji responsibly and open up a whole new world for them.

Follow me on snapchat if you would like. image-1

HAVE FUN.png

Chromebook, Geometry, Google Drawing, Google Forms, performance task, technology

CYOA Geometry Style

Mandi

Choose Your Own Adventure was such a success in Algebra that we wanted to try it in Geometry. This served as our unit 7 assessment. We followed the same process that we did here but I did update the process so students could plan electronically using this planning form. I also had students create this in New Forms so the process is slightly different than my original post.

The biggest difference between old Forms and new Forms is inserting a page compared to new section.

Untitled drawing (4)

We also used Google Drawing so students could create their geometry problems using tangents, secants, arcs & chords. Many students had never used Google Drawing and they were very excited how nice their images looked.

Two Tangents

Students had to get 3 peer reviews, which meant a student worked through their adventure, correct and incorrect answers, then gave feedback on improvements. They used this document to guide them through the peer reviews.  The result SHOULD have been a product that met all of the requirements. Some students don’t peer edit as well as other but they learned quickly that being NICE doesn’t help you improve.

Here are a few of my favorite projects. I told them I wouldn’t publish them unless they were correct. 🙂

Journey to Pasta

Royals Rally

First Day of School

Making it to the Movies

 

Geometry, Uncategorized

Circle Vocab Picture

Mandi

I don’t give vocabulary assignments very often. I usually teach it as we go in context of the lesson. Every now and then front-loading vocabulary will make lessons flow more smoothly. That’s the case with our circle unit. I can’t take credit for creating this project, but I really do like it. Students have to look up the words then create a picture with circles and label each one. Once I begin the lessons on this they are already familiar with the vocab. One student ask me today if we could do this more often, “Anytime you can color in math, it’s a good day.” We actually color in Geometry often, so I guess he has a lot of good days 🙂 I’ve listed a few examples below and then attached the Slides I gave them with more examples. Use it freely and, if you want to, let me know if you do.  I love it when others can benefit from something I already do.

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Link to Slides for the activity prompt, vocab list and other examples.

Geometry, Uncategorized

Popcorn Containers

Mandi

To reinforce the formula for the volume of a cone, I have my students create a cone and cylinder with the same radius and height, I pop a huge bag of popcorn, then we see if 3 cones full of popcorn will fill their cylinder.  I could have my students google the process of making a cone with a specific height but it takes awhile so I give them the process.  If you have a few days to spend on it, having them come up with the process would be a great way to add rigor to the project.  I’ve added my note sheet at the bottom that includes the process and reflection.

Popcorn Container Doc

Geometry, technology, Uncategorized

Superhero Transformations

Mandi

I found this project a few years ago and I’ve had the students create them on paper.  The products are always very impressive and students love the project.  The original link can be found here. This year I wanted the students to create online using Google Docs and Draw.  It was a little bit of a learning curve, but I like that the student used the transformation tools built into Google Docs.  I’ve posted a few examples below and also my updated version of the original project I linked to above.  It really helps the students visualize transformations and helps them use this vocabulary in context of their situation.

Comic Transformation Map - Madelyn Fuller

StudentSampleforTransformationcomic

ComicStripTransformationexample2

Documents

Information Sheet & Scoring Guide