So, I stopped stressing out about it and figured that I'd give my kids a "break" for a couple of weeks with the following project: Pick any concept or problem that you've enjoyed this year, write a short technical paper explaining the concept / problem, and figure out a cool way to present the concept / problem at Exhibition. At some students' suggestion, we called this project "Cuckoo for Calculus!" (To my surprise, no one volunteered to dress up as the crazy Cocoa Puffs bird.) You can see the actual project handout and specifications for the write-up here.
I rationalized spending two and a half weeks on this by telling myself:
- My kids are learning a ton of math this year, most of which they'll probably forget anyway - so why not spend time delving deeper into a topic they enjoyed with the hopes that they might actually remember it?
- It's probably worth doing something fun and rejuvenating that might ward off the inevitable post-spring break Senioritis.
I did several projects last year as an 11th grade teacher, yet this was the first one the kids were somewhat excited about - and I'll admit, that felt rad. I think that the student choice element was key, as was the fact that my students are generally motivated and enjoy the class. Many students chose to return to a problem from a past challenge set, which was kind of cool. (My office mate commented that we try to get kids to work on these cool problems, and some of them get 'em and some don't, and then too often the problems just "die" and we never return to them.) You can browse through the challenge sets here.
There were two distinct pieces to this project: the write-up, and the exhibition product. I'll talk about the latter now, because it's easier. Basically, I got some really creative products. Some of my favorites were:
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A giant Tower of Hanoi game made of a PVC base and handmade pillow "discs" |
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The background poster for the 3-D product rule |
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A physical representation of the proof of the 3-D product rule (from a challenge set) |
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An artpiece demonstrating the "picture proof" that any triangle constructed with the diameter of a circle and any point on the circumference is a right triangle. The piece opens up to a full circle in order to demonstrate the proof, which is inspired by the famous problem from Paul Lockhart's A Mathematician's Lament. |
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A giant pop-up book explaining derivative shortcuts with the help of "Deric the Differentiating Duck" |
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A comic (a la xkcd) presenting the challenge problem involving pirates and a secret language for communicating the identity of a card using only four other cards. |
Thanks for sharing your challenge sets, I love how the Seniors would puzzle over them. They really enjoyed them and I hope to create some for Algebra.
ReplyDeleteHi Allison! Just saw the link to this on facebook. I never got to actually tell you, but I was really impressed by your project. I was so intrigued by the way that math connected to so many things. It really made me want to be a student in your class. :) Enjoy spring break!
ReplyDeleteHow am I just coming upon your blog now? This is such a great idea. And I love all your previous posts! Thank you for sharing your work. It's inspirational!
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Sam is right. This blog is pretty much what I wish ThThTh could be, coherent and with more than one picture per post. Consider yourself RSS aggregated.
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone - how exciting that other people are actually reading my posts! Sam, Shawn, and Phil: I've been inspired by all of your blogs, so I'm glad that I am able to contribute something back to this awesome online math community. And Brooke: you pretty much are a student in my class, first period every day :-)
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