It’s no surprise that I’m completely obsessed with Desmos and want to share it with teachers everywhere. This past year, I was given a few opportunities to run Desmos professional development for the teachers in my district, and in a few surrounding Massachusetts towns. Several people have asked me for my PD plan, so here it is:
General Structure:
Let’s Learn!
Let’s Play!
Let’s Teach!
Let’s Build!
Let’s Learn!
In the intro, I share some Desmos logistics and explain/show the difference between the calculator and activities (briefly touch upon polygraph vs activity builder vs card sorts (future PD, yay!), etc). I demonstrate basic calculator moves such as sliders, tables and regressions. But mostly, during this phase, I direct participants to Learn Desmos by finding a tutorial they are interested in and trying it out. Depending on time, you can also share the Desmos Scavenger Hunts and let participants work through them.
Let’s Play!
I choose a couple activities appropriate for the grade level of the participants, and we play! I tell participants to put on their student hats and imagine I am their teacher. I briefly explain the activity directions, give out the class code, and let them go to town. I stop at selective checkpoints to showcase various graphs or student answers from the teacher dashboard, talk about key vocab that I see being used, or to address any misconceptions I see, etc. Some of my favorite activities to choose are Polygraph: Parabolas and Marbleslides: Lines. These activities are obviously super fun, but also a middle ground for a range of middle and high school teachers in the same room. It’s always a struggle to make them stop playing so we can learn something else.
Let’s Teach!
This phase goes hand in hand with “Let’s Play,” and often, they overlap during my PD sessions. After playing one activity, we stop and analyze the activity with our teacher hats on. We talk about teacher moves that I made, implementation strategies, possible implementation challenges, and really analyze the teacher dashboard. I bring up past activities from my Desmos history and show participants some student work. It’s also during this phase that I finally show them the search engine on the teacher site and ask them to look up a topic they are teaching within the next day or two and see what they can find. Every single teacher has always found something they could potentially use that week.
Let’s Build!
I show teachers how to bookmark activities they find using the search engine, and then how to copy/edit them so they have a starting point. When there’s time, I walk participants through the basics of building an activity, and hopefully provide time for them to try making one with a partner. Unfortunately, this is usually the phase that gets cut out due to time constraints. One hour or afternoon is simply not enough to learn all of Desmos, but it’s definitely a start!
Please feel free to use this structure if it works for you, but make sure to adapt for your own personality/time constraints, and most importantly, find out what your learners want/need to know!
Get out your calendars and mark them now! Twitter Math Camp 2017 is being held from July 27th-30th at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School in Atlanta, Georgia.
Having just returned from my 4th Twitter Math Camp (TMC) experience in Minneapolis, I feel the need even more to book my entire summer plans around this camp. I like to spend time in the summer with my family and friends; go to the beach; read a book for fun; nap; go to the drive-in, etc. But I also NEED to spend four days in person with my MTBoS family. The people and sessions at TMC invigorate my passions and spirit and convince me that I can conquer anything in the upcoming school year.
I can’t possibly recap everything I took away from TMC16, but here are some of my favorite takeaways. I hope they become some of your favorites too! Grab a drink, there are a lot 🙂
Favorite Pre-TMC Outing: After arrival, I adventured to the Minnehaha Falls with a small group. The weather wasn’t the best, but we had a fabulous time exploring the falls and walking to the confluence of the Mississippi River and Minnehaha Creek.
Favorite New Desmos Calculator Feature: Desmos now has audio capabilities for visually impaired and blind students. Use Command F5 for the voice option, and Option + T for the audio trace. Desmos will read the expression being typed, and then play a graph used a pitched audio representation. Kudos to Desmos for striving to be fully accessible to all users!
Favorite New Desmos Activity Builder Feature: Card sorts! Ask Desmos and you shall receive! By turning on the “Labs” option once you’re logged into Desmos, you now have the option to build card sorts within the activity builder platform. I made a cart sort for Quadratic Equations, and I can’t wait to make more and then also steal from the crowdsourced list. My group loved that we can input card sorts already created; ask students to sort in more than one way; narrow responses by asking for a specific number of cards in a pile; and ask students to analyze why someone else sorted the cards a different way. The possibilities are truly endless, and you can check out the card sort bank here.
Favorite Passionate Educator Title: Chief Evangelist. In her keynote speech, Sara VanDerWerf challenged us to become “Chief Evangelists” for our passions in math education. Sara said, “Sharing your best with others who can benefit is a responsibility and opportunity that falls to everyone” and “To be good at evangelizing, you’re gonna have to practice.” You also need to prepare mini-elevator speeches for each of your passions so you’re ready to share, and tweak them depending on your audience (students, parents, teachers, leaders). I’m going to spend some time this summer narrowing down my list of math education passions to figure out what I want to advocate for.
Favorite Dorm Life: While not all aspects of Dorm Life at Augsberg College were glamorous (looking at you, shower stalls), I had a complete ball living with some TMC-ers for four days. Waking up and having morning bathroom chats about math ed, doing the wobble in common areas late at night, and watching the bachelorette with a huge crew were all completely memorable TMC experiences.
Favorite ELL Strategy: The snowball activity is a great way to get students writing, reading, and speaking in math class. Have students answer a prompt on paper, crumple up the paper, and throw it somewhere in the room. Each student then finds a new paper,
reads the response, and either 1) Adds a new idea 2) Contributes 3) Corrects something
written. After going through the cycle three times, ask students to share ideas out loud
from whatever paper is in front of them. It’s anonymous, non-threatening, and fun for students. And again, it provides them with an outlet for individual think time, following by writing, reading, and speaking. Priceless.
Favorite PD Strategy: To assess participant’s understanding during professional development, I highly recommend using the “Filling in Circles” strategy modeled by Michelle. Start by identifying the key concepts of the session, or in our case, the barriers to implementing responsive stations. Then, have participants continually reflect on the topics and fill in the circles as their learning and understanding grows. Facilitator is able to see what topics need to be discussed more, and participants are able to ask better questions about what they want/need to know. Very easy and very powerful.
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Favorite Mapping Tool: Popplet. Use it as a mind-mapping tool or to help students think/learn visually. We used it to map skills and identify gaps.
Favorite Restaurant: Pizza Luce! I had Baked Potato pizza both times we went there because it was just SO GOOD. They were also very accommodating of our large groups.
Favorite Shared Experience: Jonathan talked about how he created a shared
experience in his school by creating “Varsity Math” for his calculus and statistics
I’m on the team!
students. He branded them with shirts, stickers, and inspirational speeches; and the kids just LOVED it. They bought in. They felt like they were part of a special community… because they were. Jonathan even graciously invited all of TMC16 to join the team. How can we create shared experiences for the students in our own communities?
Favorite JLV Reminder: In Jose Vilson‘s keynote speech on “TMC16, Race, and What We’re Not Talking About,” he challenged us to lead hard conversations and be okay with feeling uncomfortable. He also reminded us that we have students who are much more capable of talking about this stuff than we are; often because they have less filters. He told us to “get out of their way” but provide an outlet to let it happen. This was a much needed reminder for me, because I often feel like I should/need to have all the answers, so when I don’t, I avoid the conversation. I know I need to work on this, and my students can probably help me. Watch Jose’s keynote here.
Favorite “Getting Triggy With It” Activity: Kristen led an excellent session on how to make trig and the unit circle not a mystery. Grab all her resources here! My favorite activity was using one triangle drawn on patty paper to construct the unit circle. Simple approach but nicely shows how all the key points are determined.
See Rachel’s tweet for pictures of activity in action:
symmetry in unit circle really obvious (and circle less cluttered) by constructing w patty paper! #TMC16pic.twitter.com/PIkhCDq418
Favorite Verb: Edmund Harris and Chris Shore reminded us that modeling is a verb. It’s something kids should be doing, not something given to them. Modeling is a: Creative. Active. Process.
Favorite Physical Activity: Sara graciously brought her Backwards Bike to camp, and let me ride it as much as I wanted. If you’re not familiar with backwards bikes, watch this video. Even though I came home with several bike battle wounds, I had an absolute blast trying to ride this thing. Even after just a few times, I felt like I was making progress and coming up with new strategies to try out. Now I’m off to find someone to make one for me.
Favorite Project: Sam shared a project he does with students called “Explore Math” so they can explore math outside of school and see its beauty. He wrote about the project on his blog and shared the website he asked students to explore. It’s a “low stakes, high reward” activity. Some kids will do the bare minimum, but others will take it to levels that Sam wasn’t even expecting. His recommendation is to keep it open, keep the mini explorations mini, and don’t compare projects.
Favorite Pre-Assessment: Don’t have one yet, need to make them! Michelle led us through an eye-opening morning session about identifying the gaps in students’ understanding and then using responsive stations to address those gaps using differentiation. I’m excited to follow Michelle’s instructions to create appropriate pre-assessments. There should only be one skill per question and as short as possible. Focus on what pre-skills students need to know in order to be successful with new content, don’t worry about the would-be-nice-to-know. The goal of the pre-assessment is so you can figure out where students are at, and provide them with learning opportunities if they don’t know, and learning opportunities if they do know (enrichment). Elissa wrote a great recap of the entire three days.
Favorite Call to Action: Tracy Zager‘s keynote speech titled “What do we have to learn from each other?” was inspiring and community-driven. She stressed that we need to stop pitting content and pedagogy against each other; we need to stop pitting elementary and high school teachers against each other. Neither of these things is productive for our community. We all have an important role in building our students’ conceptual understanding, and we need to work together to get it done. Tracy’s call to action is to analyze whom you are following on Twitter, and make sure you have a variety of contacts you can reach out to for support and to ask questions. Watch Tracy’s keynote here.
Favorite Fraction Problems: After Tracy’s talk, I pushed myself to attend Brian Bushart‘s session on fractions: a place I knew I would feel out of my comfort zone as a high school teacher. One of the reasons Brian said fractions are so hard for students, is due to practices that simplify or mask the meaning of fractions.
By finding a common denominator, you aren’t comparing fractions anymore. You’re now only comparing the whole number numerators. Cross multiplying is an example of masking; you’re getting rid of the fractions and comparing whole numbers. This masks the fact that you’re still comparing two fractions. Neither of these strategies takes into account the size of the fractions and therefore rob students of sense making. Brian then shared a bunch of strategies for how to deal with this, and I will lead you directly to his documents to learn more.
Favorite Fraction Big Idea: Another huge idea that Brian threw at us is the difference in how whole numbers and fractions are treated as adjectives and nouns. Look at the slides below for comparison.
Whole Numbers:
Fractions:
I’ve never really thought about it this way before, so this was a *mind blown* moment for me, and others at my table. Many students don’t actually gain enough understanding about fractions to realize that fractions are actually numbers and can be represented on a number line. They get stuck at adjectives (1/2 a cake) instead of moving onto nouns. This is where we need to get!
Favorite “Make It Stick” Strategy: In her session, Anna talked about the various ways she uses strategies from Make It Stick in her classroom. My favorite strategy she discussed was Calibration. The goal is to “replace a subjective experience or feeling with an objective gauge outside ourselves.” It stems from the “Illusion of Knowing” in that we think we know something, but really we only have a familiarity with it. The book recommends providing more opportunities for students to test themselves, review again, and test again. Quizzes need to be low stakes. I chose this as my favorite, because it ties in nicely with my morning session theme of helping students to fill in gaps.
Favorite Dylan Kane Confession: Dylan Kane‘s keynote speech titled “More than Resources” was one of the most honest and open talks I’ve ever heard. Dylan’s confession that he thought he was doing a good job when he started, but then realized he could be doing much better, really stuck with me. His big lesson learned was: “My intuition isn’t very good, because we see what we want to see.” Dylan was stealing all the great resources from the MTBoS, but realized that great resources do not equal great teaching. He challenged us to think about what will specifically work with our own students; and deliberately practice what we want to get better at. I haven’t come across a video of Dylan’s keynote yet, but you can access his resources here.
Favorite Upcoming Books to Read:
Tracy Zager: Becoming The Math Teacher You Wish You’d Had [Expected: December 2016]
Denis Sheeran: Instant Relevance, Using Today’s Experiences in Tomorrow’s Lesson [Expected: August 2016]
Favorite Song: Greg answered a call from the twitterverse to write a song about the cubic formula. He answered with the most epic sister act version ever… enjoy:
Favorite Student Quote: I know what you’re thinking, there were no students at TMC16 so how can I have a favorite student quote? Well, in Annie‘s flex session on “Mathematicians: More than just white dudes” she shared this student quote: “Are there any mathematicians like me?” This question led to her creation of the Mathematician’s Project, where she showcases one mathematician every Friday (as long as they aren’t an old, white, rich, dead man) in order to show her students that anyone can be a mathematician. She includes their name, date of birth, ethnicity, background biography, major accomplishments, and math specialty. She even polled her students to see the types of people they wanted to learn about, and had students write their own mathematician bios. The shift in her classroom culture was unmeasurable.
Favorite Icebreaker: Amy taught us an amazing new icebreaker that I can’t way to play with my students when school starts called “Go Ahead – Break the Ice.” Break students into small groups, and give them three minutes to collectively come up with a favorite book, movie and game. Then, have students list all the ways they came to the decisions they did. This leads into a great discussion on group norms and how to work with other people. Some of the decision-making strategies were: “strong arming, time pressure, majority rules, brainstorm, survey, throw out ideas until they stick, pickiest gets the choice, narrow the choices, help those who aren’t speaking up, make sure everyone has a voice, etc…” It was a really fun activity to get to know your group, and have time to talk about group dynamics.
Favorite Day of the Year: Hannah loves celebrating birthdays and she shared some great ideas for celebrating in the classroom. She does birthday shoutouts on the board and buys cheap birthday seat covers. She sees increased positivity in her classroom culture and her students love it. She also uses birthdays to talk about what is and is not a function:
Favorite My Favorite: I can’t really put into words out much Glenn means to me in this community. Watch his talk here, and be as thankful as I am that he didn’t turn around.
Thank you to everyone who helped make my experience at TMC16 an amazing one! Much MTBoS love ❤
For Week 1 of the Exploring MTBoS blogging initiative I decided to document one day of my life. Although I’m just posting about it right now, this day occurred last Thursday (1/14/16).
5:11 am Alarm goes off. Hit snooze.
5:20 am More snoozing.
5:29 am Get up and get ready. Orange juice is my morning power beverage. Check email/facebook/twitter while eating my cereal. Forgot to pick out an outfit the night before so I waste a good ten minutes staring at my closet. No food in fridge for lunch, that means I’m buying today.
6:20 am Put out trash and leave for work.
6:28 am Arrive at school. Check mailbox and help a substitute teacher find her way.
6:32 am Arrive in classroom. I am amped up for today! We are doing one of my favorite lessons and following it up with a Desmos Activity Builder lesson that I can’t wait to try. I make some last minute edits to the activity, and queue up all the browser tabs I’m going to need for the day.
6:50 am Students start entering the building and my classroom. I immediately get bombarded with demands to know how many jelly beans are in the container. I refuse to tell them.
They know the winner is going to be announced today, but not until 7:25 am I say. Last minute guesses are welcome. Students hang out in homeroom, play board games, and experiment with my Eno board which is now up and running.
7:20 am Homeroom officially begins. Take attendance. Two students absent. They’re going to be sorry they miss today’s lesson.
7:25 am The bell rings to go to first period, and without speaking, I simply go up to the white board and write down the correct number of jelly beans: 1472. Students from the other two homerooms next door come in to see the answer. There is yelling; they are excited! They still don’t know why we are playing guessing games.
7:29 am This is the 1st of 5 times I am going to do this lesson today. I teach five sections of STEM Honors Algebra 1 to 9th graders. It will get better as the day goes on, as I observe and adapt to how my early students respond to it. Today is the first day of our unit on Absolute Value Functions. The beginning of the lesson can be found here, minus the project part (they’ll get this later). After we dissect the jelly bean situation, I show them this Estimation 180 problem, and we guess again. I take predictions for the shape of the graph and this time they think they have it all figured it out. The shape will be a V, but skinnier! No, wider! No, a check mark! Because there are fewer under-guessing options! We are on to something:
At this point, they are ready to explore and play around in Desmos on their own/with a partner. This was my first attempt at duplicating someone else’s Activity Builder and using it in my room. Overall, I was pleased with how it went, but would definitely make adjustments for the future. Some students finished early. I wish there were more challenges, such as what happens when you throw in negative signs. I tried to throw this question in as the day went on, but it didn’t work because I had already made a class code. I also wish I had a question about the absolute value vertex form equation with h and k. So that students could be more specific when they described how the function transforms. Here are some of their descriptions:
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We ran out of time at the end of class to debrief (my fault), and we don’t have class again until Wednesday (1/20), so to be continued!
8:17 am Period A ends. 4 minutes passing time. Run to bathroom. Head to STEM colleague’s room for our common planning period. Our big Winter STEM Expo is tomorrow, so we are doing last minute prep work. Edit presentation rubrics and chat with 10th grade team about last minute details.
9:12 am Period C begins. Algebra 1 take 2.
10:05 am Period D begins. Algebra 1 take 3. Four students actually leap out of their seats when the number of sweethearts in revealed.
10:53 am Lunch! Rush to teacher’s cafeteria and order my turkey wrap. Ask for cookies too. Get a slight look of disapproval when I reject the offers for pickles, apples or carrots as an additional side. No, just cookies please. I already have lettuce and tomato in my wrap. Eat lunch with math colleagues. Discuss our losing the powerball last night.
11:22 am Period E begins. Algebra 1 take 4. By this time of the day, we have some cheaters. Students from earlier have given away the answer, but I weasle out some confessions and we move on with the activity.
12:21 pm Period F begins. Algebra 1 take 5.
1:08 pm Period G begins. My prep. Finally. It’s been a great day but I’m exhausted. Today’s lesson was a high energy one. I always try to show the same enthusiasm with my last class as the first, but sometimes it can be difficult. Check personal email. Finish editing STEM rubrics. Take care of emails. Chat with STEM Director.
1:55 pm School day ends. Go to advisor meeting about upcoming school-wide dance. Return to classroom. Approximately 40 students have elected to stay after school to make trifold posters and last-minute changes to their STEM projects. My coworker has been supervising all of them while I was at the meeting. Spend afternoon giving advice on projects and printing, printing, printing for them.
4:15 pm Say good-bye to final students. Clean classroom.
4:30 pm Pack up and head out. Run errands. Sit on couch. Breathe. Check email/facebook/twitter. Make dinner. Have plenty of time to write this blog post… but don’t do it. Take the night off. Watch an episode of the Blacklist (okay, okay, three episodes).
After a brief conversation on Twitter, I realized I never posted my student project guidelines for my Desmos Function Art Project. Here are the documents!
One of my coworkers made this handy Desmos QuickStart Guide which has been a lifesaver for getting students started on their projects! I also have students do the “Restrictions” Tour on Desmos.
Although I just returned “home” from a California adventure that included visits to Santa Cruz, Big Sur, Anaheim, Los Angeles and Claremont… I actually felt like I was home while attending this year’s Twitter Math Camp (TMC). It has become my must-attend event of the summer, and I plan the rest of my break around it. Doing math and talking about math with such passionate and inspiring educators propels me into the new school year on high speed. Next year’s camp will be held at Augsburg College in Minneapolis from July 16-19, 2016 and you can bet I’ll do anything in my power to attend.
It always take a bit of time to wind down from TMC; it’s information overload in the best way possible. But it’s unreasonable to think that I will return to my classroom in 5 weeks and implement everything I learned. These are my largest takeaways from TMC, and “my favorite” memories/quotes/highlights, that I wish to carry with me during the year.
Favorite Disney Picture(s): Pre-TMC, I spent a whirlwind 16 hours at Disneyland and California Adventure Park with Casey, Connie, Nicole, and Meg. We mapped our course through the parks to maximize the number of rides/attractions we could see in one day. And of course, when we weren’t tweeting while waiting in line, we talked about teaching math.
Favorite Price is Right Group: It’s a very long process of signing waivers, getting nametags, and being interviewed by producers for a potential spot on the show, but in the end it was worth it to check this item off my bucket list. We cheered and yelled prices at the contestants, and you can watch how it all played out on November 2nd!
Favorite Morning Session: I made the decision to attend Elizabeth and Chris‘ morning session on “Creating a Culture of Exploratory Talk” and it was the perfect decision for me. I have been attempting to hold better classroom discussions, but this session provided me with specific strategies/structures to use with my students to get them to have richer conversations. I have selected Elizabeth’s Talking Points Activity as my #1TMCthing, so I will be writing another blog post about that in the next couple weeks. In the meantime, here is our morning session wiki page, and here is one of Elizabeth’s posts about Talking Points.
Favorite Debating Activity: Table Debates. During the exploratory talk session, Chris shared his numerous activities for bringing debate into the math classroom. He shares many of his strategies on his website. An argument is comprised of two parts: a claim and a warrant. You can turn almost any statement into a debateable question by adding words such as: best/worst, always/sometimes/never, most, weirdest, biggest/smallest, etc. When students are table debating, they are given a problem or situtation, and two possible opinions on the topic. They must state their argument for the opinion on their side of the table. This is my favorite strategy because students might not always agree with the opinion they are given. However, they need to figure out a strong argument to support that opinion. I feel like many of my questions can be easily rewritten in this format, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to implement this activity this year.
Favorite Must-Watch TED Talk: In Fawn’s keynote, she shared a quote from Rita Pierson’s TED Talk: “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.” I’ve come across this TED talk before, but never actually watched it… until now. The quote nicely highlights Fawn’s recommendations for good teaching: fast (in terms of returning emails, feedback, etc); fair, friendly, firm, and funny.
Favorite SMP Posters: During his talking on Teaching the 8 Practices, Chris shared his SMP posters and had us analyze them. Chris boils down all the CCSS into two words: Thinking and Communicating. The posters all have the same format and are designed specifically for our students. My favorite part of each poster are the questions in the bottom left corner. These are questions that not only can our students ask themselves to determine which practice they are doing, but we as teachers can ask them as we develop lessons and tasks.
Favorite Jumping Picture: Taking jumping pictures while traveling is kind of my thing, and I found a jumping partner in Connie. She shared my general enthusiasm for just having the best time ever no matter where we were, and it resulted in epic pictures like this one (the burgers were great too!)
Favorite Math Mistakes Activity: Andrew’s session on Math Mistakes and Error Analysis provided me with a great opportunity to analyze the value of mistakes and how we can use them to help our students learn. My favorite activity of Andrew’s is when he gives students a handout like this:
Every problem has a mistake. Every problem. Students must analyze the structure of the problem to build their conceptual understanding, based on what is currently incorrect. Students must fix the mistakes once identified and justify their reasoning. Read more about this activity on Andrew’s blog.
Favorite Good Teacher vs. Great Teacher Distinguishing Feature: Ilana Horn’s keynote titled “Growing Our Own Practice” was inspiring and informative. Among sharing many discoveries found during her studies, she shared three key features that differentiate between the good teachers and great teachers she observed: Teacher Agency, Empathetic Reasoning, and Ecological Thinking. My favorite among these is Teacher Agency. Ilana emphasized that great teachers state their problems as actionable items. The example she shared is how a teacher views the problem of a student finishing his/her work early. A great teacher does not discuss this problem as having fast vs. slow kids. A great teacher discusses this “problem” in terms of the task itself, and the value of finding group-worthy tasks that engage all levels of learners and include extension possibilities. As I start a new school year with another new principal, I want to remember this mindset: how can we take a problem and turn it into an action item?
Favorite New Desmos Activity: This is actually a trick. I can’t tell you about my new favorite Desmos activity because it hasn’t been released yet. But Eli gave the TMC crowd a sneak peek, and let me tell you, it’s amazing. It will change your teaching life. Stay tuned, it should be released sometime next week.
Favorite Data Table: In his session on Vertical Non-Permanent Surfaces, Alex shared this data table from Peter Liljedahl’s research:
Hopefully this convinces you to head to your nearest home improvement store and purchase some shower board panels if you haven’t already!
Favorite Debriefing Partner: At the end of every day, Rachel and I would meet up for the walk/drive back to the hotel, and immediately begin sharing everything that happened during the day. It was one of the times of each day that I treasured most. We needed that time together to gather our thoughts and really process everything we learned/experienced. Since we didn’t end up attending a single session together, we were able to double our information intake. Thank you for being the perfect roommate, Rachel!
Favorite Piano Bar Song: Sweet Caroline. John requested it, someone else vetoed it, more money was thrown into the pot, and then we had an epic singing contest between both sides of the room. We owe a huge number of thanks to PianoPiano in Claremont for entertaining us each night.
My Favorite My Favorite: Matt shared his strategy of using music cues to help students “become self-directed learners.” I won’t go too in depth because Matt graciously wrote a very extensive blog post about it. Within his post, you can find a google folder with all the music he uses, and a list of the cues in which he uses music. I would like to try implementing 2 or 3 of these this year, but I am definitely overwhelmed trying to figure out the technology to make this happen in my classroom easily. If I can get it working, I know I want a music cue for: “Take out your chromebook, go to student desmos, type in the class code.”
“Don’t stress so much about how to make things debatable. Just throw the word ‘best’ in there and let it go.” –Chris Luzniak
“Strive for a Process Reward System, instead of an ‘Answer’ reward system.” –Chris Shore
Thank you to the TMC volunteer planning committee! This special conference would not exist without all your hard work, and we are all better teachers because of it!
About a month ago I wrote about how I use Desmos Des-man to introduce an algebra graphic art project. I have done this project for several years now, but this time, I added a special twist… After making a design in Desmos, the students used Creo Parametric to create models of their designs which they 3D printed!
Step 1: I taped four sheets of graph paper together so that students would have a large work area. They chose a theme and started drawing. The only requirements I gave: there had to be at least one image per group member with at least 8 equations (at least 2 quadratic and 2 absolute value) and 2 inequalities
Step 2: Students divided up the drawing and started determining the equations. Some students physically cut their image apart so they could work on it at home.
Step 3: Students took turns inputting their equations into one Desmos calculator. This took a bit of time since the students could not all be the same calculator at once. Most of the groups would save the Desmos image as a PDF to google drive, and then share that file with their group members.
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Step 4: All of my students take an Engineering class where they learn how to use Creo Parametric. I also took a PTC STEM Certificate Program this past semester where I learned the basics of 3D modeling. I had each student start with a basic rectangle and they uploaded their Desmos image to the rectangle. Then they traced the outline and extruded the lines. That’s it! Some students who are very comfortable with Creo decided to add special features and colors.
Step 5: I printed the designs using our Stratasys uPrint machine and the students created 3-Dimensional Displays to showcase their work.
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Some groups did not complete a 3-Dimensional Display, so I will be turning their designs into magnets!
My students were so engaged in this project and so proud of the models they created. It felt so natural to have them continue working with their Desmos designs and turn them into actual 3d prints. One aspect of the project that I didn’t stress with the students this year was the scale of their models. Next year I will have students determine a group scale, so that each component of the image fits together better.
I feel very lucky to have access to a 3D printer at school, and I will be looking for new ways to bring 3D printing to my students naturally. If you have any ideas, please share!
Update: I shared this project during Twitter Math Camp 2015. Here is a video of my presentation:
One of my favorite course projects is the Graphic Art Project. Students will design an image on graph paper, write all the equations for it, and type them into Desmos. To intro this assignment, I have students complete my own version of the amazing Desmos Des-man activity.
Instead of having students create their own Des-man, I ask them all to recreate this picture:
The main reason I start by having all students create the same face is because this is a review activity for us. At this point in the year, students have learned to write equations for linear, absolute value, and quadratic equations. They have also studied domain and range restrictions. I want them to practice these skills, and not just guess/play with the sliders/numbers to see how the equations transform. Each student is given this sheet to show any work they did to find the equations:
The Teacher Desmos interface allows me to see very quickly who gets it and who needs help (see above). Some students will play around and choose their own colors, or add additional inequalities. When they are all done, we move on to Part 2, and I let them create their own designs. This year we are trying something special for the final product and it is still in the works… so, to be continued!
It’s no surprise that I’m completely obsessed with Desmos and want to share it with teachers everywhere. This past year, I was given a few opportunities to run Desmos professional development for the teachers in my district, and in a few surrounding Massachusetts towns. Several people have asked me for my PD plan, so here it is: 
Growing Exponentially 