The Friday Fave has been thinking about textbook problems recently. There are
some excellent ones in the world, but they are far too rare. Most of them
(I’m looking at you, bandana dog!) should would benefit from deletion
and composting.
But some textbook problems just need to be brought to life.
This week’s Friday Fave—Game, Set, Flat—is an example of such a problem. We don’t just TELL you that the
relationship between the number of bounces and the bounce height is a
geometric sequence, we SHOW you, and we draw on your experience.
We let you control the tennis ball. You are free to give this graph a try.
And when you do, we’ll show what that looks like in the real world
You can play around, of course, but there’s real work to be done here.
Tennis balls must satisfy constraints and it’s your job to make sure
they do. You’ll need math for that. With
Game, Set, Flat, we’ve built an environment friendly to learning that math. So if
you’re teaching exponential decay, or geometric sequences, come
take a tour of the tennis ball factory.
When I think of what a professional learning community should be, I point to
my experience as part of the Desmos Fellowship.
I would highly encourage any teacher looking to grow in their profession to
apply. The Desmos Fellowship community has given me a place to ponder my
teaching practices and help me to grow. It has been incredibly helpful to
see what other teachers are doing and knowing I can always receive help and
feedback from anyone.
We launched the first Desmos Fellowship cohort six months ago. Cohort 1
comprised 39 math teachers spread across the United States from diverse
backgrounds, experiences, and interests. We brought them all to San Francisco
for a weekend and we’ve continued that work online ever since.
Desmos has benefitted enormously from the Fellowship’s counsel and
criticism. Our Fellows receive the first look at every new feature and
activity we produce and we fold their input into the public releases. Our
company wouldn’t be the same without them.
We’ll be opening applications for Cohort 2 shortly and we think you
should apply. We’ll learn lots from you, and we’ll also make sure you get as
much as you give. For example:
Access to the best resources, collaboration and feedback.
Fellows receive membership in a private Slack channel where some of the
sharpest educators gather to trade awesome activities and resources.
If you haven’t tried Jenn Vadnais’
Mini Golf Marbleslides
on coordinate graphing, you should. All 6th grade teachers in my district
did it in PD last month in anticipation of their graphing unit and I am now
getting giddy daily emails from various teachers with how much they love it.
Conversations around pedagogy and purposeful use of technology.
Desmos Fellows share more than great activities. We select Fellows who
demonstrate capacity in technology and pedagogy, but who also demonstrate a
willingness to learn and to help others learn. The result is a chat channel
full of people who help each other daily become better teachers and coaches.
You’ll now find them featured at state and national conferences and in
positions of leadership at their schools and districts.
I’m super excited that our Director of Schools has decided that Activity
Builder should be a tool used as part of our district-wide equity
strategies. I did an activity with the school board last week were board
members literally interrupted me with “WOW!” more than once.
Community
Teaching is difficult work that gets easier and more satisfying as the
community surrounding you grows stronger. Desmos wants to support exactly that
kind of community, taking interesting educators and supporting their growth.
Being connected to so many teachers via Desmos has been one of the best
continual professional development activities. Each day, some how, makes me
love teaching math just a little bit more.
And More
Early access to our newest features and activities.
An all expenses paid trip to Desmos HQ in San Francisco to meet some of the
most passionate and interesting math teachers around.
A chance to join the Desmos team and earn income as a Desmos Certified
Presenter.
Interested in joining Cohort 2 of the Desmos Fellowship? Stay tuned for
announcements on the
Des-blog
or Twitter.
Unusually early springlike weather in large parts of the country has the
Friday Fave looking ahead to swimming pool season, and nothing goes with
swimming pools quite as well as algebra.
The Pool Border Problem
is a classic for a reason. There are many ways to count the tiles on the
border of a square pool. Different counting methods generate different
algebraic expressions, and we can check the equivalence of these expressions
by verifying that each will correctly count the number of tiles bordering an n
by n pool.
This new Desmos version adds iterative feedback. If you think the expression 3n+8 describes the number of tiles
bordering an n by n pool, we’ll let you see whether that
works for all values of n.
The expressions students write impact what happens on the screen, and the
activity turns a wide range of student input into meaningful feedback. The
expressions collect in the dashboard for the teacher to use for creating
classroom conversations.
Dive on in, the water’s fine, and
the pool’s border
is perfectly tiled!
