WHAT IS MY SHOWCASE?
During my 12 years as a high school mathematics teacher I have always strived to be the very best for my students. Keeping their goals, struggles, and purpose in mind while also challenging them to work hard and not give up - I am always reflecting and revising my units, lessons, and methods. During the past year and a half while working towards my Masters of Arts in Educational Technology (MAET) degree I was able to really hone these skills while picking up a few new ones along the way.
Below I have some of my best work sorted into four categories -
Below I have some of my best work sorted into four categories -
- Mathematics Lessons - to highlight my ability to engage students in diverse and unique ways.
- Mathematics Units - to show the breadth and depth of knowledge that I put into creating a comprehensive and cohesive unit.
- Theories and Ideas on Education - to give a preview of how I think about how students learn, how I know students struggle, and how to help students feel success overall.
- Integrating Technology in Unique ways - skills I have learned along the way to make engaging with technology more interesting.
LESSONS
By using skills such as a hook, students are more apt to engage with a topic. The 3 Act Math does just this, it presents students will a cliff hanger ending and just enough information to make an educated guess at the final result. I have adapted many 3 Act Math lessons for my classroom, Nail Polish being one of them. Clicking the image will give you a PDF copy of this particular 3 Act Math and you will also need the videos from the site, When Math Happens. I discuss this lesson further in my blog post about what 3 Act Math is and how I incorporate it in my classroom.
By incorporating real world skills into your lessons students can better understand how math is all around us. To introduce graphing to my Algebra 1 students I always start with this Graphing Stories activity where students watch videos of different activities and they must represent them graphically. It provides amazing conversations around labeling (the x and y axis as well as the graph overall), estimation, and constant vs changing.
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Another way to build skills such as student engagement, is by incorporating their interests into lessons whenever possible. This can be difficult in any subject area but if you are able to, or can at least give students the choice to bring in their passions to whatever topic you are learning I have found that they get more out of learning. One such project that I created for my geometry students has them listen to the podcast above, try to find or create their own 'Golden Moment', and then appreciate and give feedback to a classmates creation, read more here!
By bringing fun to my students they were able to relax and enjoy math, a skill that is beneficial to making students more comfortable in the classroom. In this parabola lab I have each student find a parabola somewhere out in the world, upload a picture of it to desmos.com, and use a quadratic regression calculator to fit a parabola on top of that object as best they can. This year I added to the project by having students upload the final result (like the image above) into a shared google slide and students would analyze one other parabola and then we voted at the most unique parabola and that student earned a small amount of extra credit.
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UNITS
I use Interactive Student Notebooks (ISNs) in my classroom, however the beginning of the year in Algebra 1 always feels less than interactive. Students are learning the difference between simplifying math (order of operations) and solving for x (reverse order of operations and inverse operations) and it all felt very formulaic to me - pun intended. To add some excitement to this unit I decided to completely gamify it by turning it into a math Dungeons & Dragons unit or Bastilles & Basilisks Unit where students form a party of heroes, earn skill points to make them stronger, and eventually venture out to defeat 8 different Basilisks hold up in their Bastilles. By gamifying the unit I am able to be more flexible with my students, give them choice, and meet their needs more appropriately.
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One of the most challenging topics I teach my Algebra 2 students each year is logarithms. They are learning a new mathematical operation (like addition) with very large numbers which can be extremely challenging. I added to this unit by incorporating number talks, real world tasks, and connections to previous lessons my Introduction to Logarithms Unit which builds on students prior knowledge and connects them to some very abstract feeling type math.
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I am humble enough to admit to myself and my students that probability is not my favorite or my strongest area of mathematical expertise. However after spending three weeks this winter working with peers and colleagues to incorporate games, labs, and a student choice assessment I was able to come up with a unit that I feel confident and proud of. Read more about my Introduction to Probability Unit and let me know how I can improve it even further. Reflecting and editing my lessons from year to year is a skill that is necessary to being a good educator.
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On of my favorite topics to teach in Geometry is Right Triangle Trigonometry. I feel that having taught this class for the past 12 years I have really found a good way to introduce Right Triangle Trigonometry to my students in a non-threating way. We rely on our knowledge of the Pythagorean theorem as well as special right triangles and then when Sine, Cosine, and Tangent are introduced we look for patterns during a gallery walk to see that solving with Trig is the same as solving for x! By tapping into students prior knowledge and encouraging them to look for patterns in math I am able to make a threating looking topic seem much easier than students initally thought.
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Another unit that I have worked on refining for many years is my Polynomials Unit for Algebra 2. Talking about patterns in graphing and knowing how to make a sketch of a graph without a calculator is a vital skill to visualize and see math another way. By incorporating labs that utilize desmos.com, providing multiple opportunities to see graphs and their corresponding equations, and by incorporating some fun projects I always get great student response during this unit. Helping students to visualize math is a very necessary and important skill that I try to incorporate in all of my units.
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A unit that I haven't taught in a while, but updated and plan to present to my students this year is my Data Unit for Algebra 1. By incorporating real world data and opportunities for my students to incorporate their own interests when searching for that data I am excited to see how this revised unit goes over with my students this year. Another unit that displays my ability to connect my students with math happening all around them and to give them the freedom to pursue ideas within that space that they have an interest or passion for.
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THEORIES AND IDEAS ON EDUCATION
After researching the many different theories on how we learn I formulated my own Theory of Learning and in a playful way decided to 'proved it' by using the two-column proof method that I teach my Geometry students each year. Not only can you read about how I feel we learn, but I also display my ability to take something that is somewhat bland (research on learning theories) and present it in a playful, approachable way.
The video above I discuss how to incorporate 21st century skills such as problem solving, collaboration, and critical thinking in the classroom and why it is so important. I also discuss 21st Century Learning further in the linked blog post. Many of the skills I discuss in this video I incorporate into my lessons and units. I also am able to present the material in a visually interesting way.
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A big problem facing educators today is supporting students with anxiety in the classroom. I see this quite often in my mathematics classroom and in the video above I discuss a test to see if incorporating more student led learning would help with their anxieties and in my final report, Problems of Practice I discuss my overall findings in more detail. Many of my lessons and units focus on how to approach and help students struggling with anxieties in the mathematics classroom.
In the video above I discuss one of the most wicked problems facing mathematics today - a fixed mindset vs the growth mindset. I also talk about this further in my Wicked Problems in Math blog post. Another video where I present problems facing mathematics teachers in a visually compelling way and I also use the growth mindset attitude and many of Jo Boaler's materials from her website Youcubed.org in my lessons and units.
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INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY IN UNIQUE WAYS
While discussing the book, A More Beautiful Question I show off my sketch noting skills which can make watching videos more engaging - read the blog post!
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To educate educators and students about Fair Use I made a remixed video which is another way to make a video a bit more compelling to watch - read more about it in my blog post
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