Teach 180: Marbleslide Challenges (Day 158)

Today was my last day for seniors in Calculus and I wanted them to spend their final day of math in high school just playing with mathematics.  Thanks to Sean Sweeny's Marbleslide Challenge in Desmos Activity Builder we did just that!  One pair of girls completed eleven of the challenges in about an hour.  The short video below shows the one that I think they were most proud of.

Next year I am thinking of doing this as Sean describes in his blogpost, using teacher pacing and releasing one Marbleslides challenge a week.  However, I may want to reorder the slides for this activity builder based on what functions we are studying in class.  Looks like it might be time to start my summer list of "Ideas for School This Fall".

Teach 180: The Five Pointed Star (Day 157)

The seniors last day of classes is this Friday and we essentially finished the content in Calculus last Friday.  With only 4 classes remaining, I spent the last two days showing students the documentary called "Between the Folds".  It does a great job looking at how origami blends with math and science.  It also shows that math can be learned for the sake of learning math and that applications of the math often come later.  Here is the trailer for the video:

In the video mathematics professor Eric Dermaine shows that paper can be folded and one cut made to make various shapes.  In the video, Eric folds a piece of paper and makes one cut to reveal a swan.  

After the video, I worked with students to fold paper and make one cut to form a five pointed star.  The same fold and cut trick that Betsy Ross supposedly showed George Washington when the American flag was being designed. Here are the directions we used.  My five pointed star is seen below.  We also explored mobius strips and what happens when you cut a mobius strip 1/3 from the edge of the strip and in the center of the strip. 

Teach 180: What's Going on in This Graph? (Day 156)

Today I let my students experience the new New York Times feature called What's going on in this graph?  The students worked in groups to study the graph and answered the following three questions. 1) What do you notice?  2) What do you wonder? and 3) What might be going on in this graph?  After they discussed it together, we created a class post in the comment section.  Here are two screenshots of the graph, as it changed over time.

Here is what we composed as a class response to the three questions.  Our observations received a response from the moderator and a response from someone else.  

I'll be definitely taking these comments back to my students.  Once we look at the article at the bottom of the page, it will probably help students understand why including something, or leaving something off, a graph can help the graph tell a story.