Teach 180: Marbleslide Fun! (Day 39)

Today I filled in for one class of Algebra 2 and I was asked to lead a Marbleslides activity on lines .  Students primarily used slope intercept form and worked on restricting the domain of the function.  Although the teacher I was subbing for had shown students graphs in Desmos, the students did not have much experience using Desmos for themselves.  So, I used the teacher pacing feature to lead the students though the first few slides of the activity.  The few screenshots seen here show what the teacher pacing looks like on the teacher dashboard.

When you select the Pacing icon on the left side of the screen, you see this on the dashboard.

When you click on a slide, it highlights it and then you click on the orange "Restrict to Screen X" button to place all students on the chosen screen.

Once on that screen you can advance or go back one screen at a time by moving left and right with the < and > buttons.  But did you notice the plus sign?  Do you wonder what happens when you hit that?

What?!?! You can select multiple screens!  Now I can assign certain tables to one problem, if I wish and then we can have a breakout discussion after a few minutes.

The students were fully engaged and working with a partner for about 45 minutes.  Two girls did not want to work together and I allowed them to work alone.  I soon noticed that both of them struggled and did not persevere for as long as those working in pairs did.  In addition, I spent most of my time working with the two of them instead of checking in with the other students in the class.  This definitely showed me the value of a 2:1 ratio of students to computers.  In the future, I'll use my "random assignment by playing card" method to pair all students up and require students to work together.