Musings from Mrs. Galvan

I miss blogging. I enjoy writing and reflecting. It is how I think, learn and improve my practice. Given research projects for grad school, doing more admissions work and revamping curriculum, updating this blog has fallen to the bottom of my to do list. Sigh. So, quickly, here is my to blog list (that probably won't get done anytime soon): 1. The value of students reviewing homework in small groups over a student lead presentation 2. Game in geometry - Name that Congruent 3. Math talk in algebra for writing equations of lines 4. Add a presentations section to the blog navigation 5. Lego Space Shuttle Three Act I made up and used last week in geometry to introduce similarity. Space Dude is 4cm and the orbiter is 26 cm. Not to scale. 6. Oh, and write my personal mission statement for teaching, an updated philosophy of education that includes how and why I became a teacher linked to articles and research that informs my practice... (this has been on the list since I c...

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

Yesterday's algebra class was great. We definitely fulfilled my goal of having more fun in math class. The night before last I had read an article linking curiosity with increased learning and engagement. Then yesterday's class illustrated that point perfectly. We are finishing up our unit on graphing linear equations. There are many resources available online to support this concept, so many that it was very difficult to choose. I used Dan's stacking cups . Me being me, I made a handout . I was so impressed by what seems like such a simple idea... a stack of cups... holds rigorous concepts that my students were determined to figure out. While they got that the lip height was the slope pretty easily, they wrestled with the y intercept. I resisted the urge to tell them and instead told them to measure total height for one cup, then two cups to be sure their rule worked. They were engaged for the entire class period. I heard kids debating the concepts. The curios...

I really like this task . I like spending the class period working on a worthy, layered task together. My students, however, were not impressed: "Why would I do this to when I'm on the beach?" "I'd just find some place else to eat." "You seriously want me to square that?!" The issue is NOT with the task. The issue is that I am new to this way of teaching and despite my mantras on growth mindset and posters on grit, I am still having trouble getting them to work through failure. In every class I have a handful of fixed mindset, afraid to fail kids whose first response is that the task is too hard. I might be seeing the cup only as half empty. There were lots of students who dug in, overcame obstacles, collaborated with classmates and got the answer in triumph. Is there a magic spell I can say to increase grit? I love this blog post on grit and this video on grit, BTW.