Musings from Mrs. Galvan

So every year around this time, my school shuts down and takes all the kids on retreat. I typically accompany upwards of 200 9th graders on a canoe trip down the Colorado River. It is an awesome trip and a great way for the class to bond. I have this year off though and while I will miss being part such a formative experience for my students, I am so excited to sleep in my own bed and get caught up with work and blogging. Week 7 = catch up on grading, planning, blogging and interleaving project. The last few weeks in algebra have been challenging for my students as we have been exploring complicated word problems. We worked on showing our thinking by writing and labeling all helpful expressions for a problem. The most challenging were the coin problems, interest problems and mixture problems. For each type, I lead my class through a discussion on how to translate the verbal expressions to algebraic ones. While it wasn't lecture, it also wasn't inquiry. A few days after w...

Way back on March 13, I used a less directed approach to teaching the discriminant than I had in the past. The Monday before, I was visiting a school in Houston. In one of the math classes, the teacher did a lesson that did a bit of discovery. which inspired me to change things up a bit. In the past, I have done a quick lecture on the topic and set my students free to practice in pairs as quickly as possible. I mean the discriminant is way boring so best to go quickly so the teenagers don't realize this! Building on the idea that initial struggle correlates with eventual retention, I made this quick and easy change. Students work in pairs. One student is in charge of graphing the functions on desmos . They use this guided handout and develop the rule. How does it match up to my (ever evolving) inventory of what makes a good an engaging lesson: fun and interesting it's a game with prizes problem based inquiry based connected to an application doesn't ...

Desmos is reason enough to lobby your school for a 1:1 program. I had my students make their own Desmen , or Deswomen , exactly how Fawn directed her students , with lines and parabolas only. We had 20 minutes of class time. Some finished their faces in class, others did a little more. They turned theirs in via their blogs. Check them out: Sirus Claudia Will Keon Opal Brandon Bella Brigid Bryce Kelly

Mrs. Desman Lesson Idea

I remembered last year's reflection on this lesson at 5am. I heaved a sigh, skipped a shower (tmi?), skipped making coffee and quickly made a few small improvements. Normally, I ask aloud for students' shoe size and height in inches (I am still in search of reliable questions to ask students to illustrate direct and indirect variation; please share!). This year I made it a google form. Loading... This didn't take long and was an easy way to add a bit of variety and 1:1-ness to my lesson. Around 5:30 am, I made a discovery that was a real lucky break: You can paste a table into desmos and it will plot the points! Amazing. I am sure everyone else already knew that as I am famously late to knowing things, but this really made my day. I was going for indirect variation by plotting extra curricular hours and hours of sleep. Students confessed to not sleeping because of other reasons... go figure. :) The rest of my lesson was the same as before. I have b...