Musings from Mrs. Galvan

...as I am catching up on the blog, I am looking at my lesson calendar. For Tuesday, March 17th, I had originally scheduled a Game called the Shamrock Shuffle (truth be told, I only ever had the title and was planning on coming up the the game at some point). What did I end up doing? I gave them a pre-test! Doesn't that sound fun?! So here is the confession: Sometimes I don't know when to make class a fun, white-board, teamed-up game and when kids just need pencil to paper, old fashioned practice. On this day, one day before the big test on solving quadratic functions, I woke up fearing that my students might be struggling with meta-cognition issues. They might think they know what they're doing.. but they might be wrong. So on the board I wrote Meta-Cognition Activity and I distributed yellow pre-tests for them to complete individually... in silence... while I returned emails... #teacheroftheyear To close, I displayed the answer key and they worked with their pa...

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 ...

Way back on March 12, I started what I thought would be a 3 Act with blog summary activi ty to dig deeper into vertical motion in my Algebra classes. They watched a video of the Human Cannonball, we gathered questions and I gave them more information. I will definitely do this again next year, but, as I often discover even though I have been teaching for an eternity, well 15 school years now, is that things always take longer than I plan for. Converting units and being okay with pressing the sine button on the calculator required time, individual attention and counseling. After that hurdle, most students were able to answer two questions (What is his maximum height and what is the height of the net) and summarize their results on their blogs. Check out what Lucas published . Entirely valid way to collect time data. Question gathering ahead of Act 2

Using this video for a trajectory lesson in my algebra 1 class today and tomorrow as a 3 Act. Start video at 1 minute in. The shot happens around 1:55. Pause the video after the jump, then resume for Act 3. See below video for Act 2 Image. Does anyone know how I can edit a video found online? TIA. :) KMSP-TV

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