Mathsational

This year I've taken on the #teach180 challenge.  The challenge is to post one tweet per day showing a glimpse inside your classroom.  I'm also putting the tweets together in a biweekly blog so that I can share the resources that I'm tweeting about. Day 161:  Today we had our weekly cumulative quiz.  Only 3 more weeks worth of these :) Weekly quiz today. Only 4 more before final exams #teach180 pic.twitter.com/VlAWBeNGvR — Jennifer Abel (@abel_jennifer) May 10, 2017 Day 162:  Today in geometry, we practiced constructing parallel and perpendicular lines  using ExploreLearning's Gizmo. Today in #geomchat we practiced constructing parallel and perpendicular lines using @ExploreLearning 's Gizmo #teach180 #MTBoS pic.twitter.com/fSpgvW3Yi3 — Jennifer Abel (@abel_jennifer) May 11, 2017 Day 163:  Today in algebra 2 we used the mini whiteboards to practice finding the sum of infinite geometric series. Today in #alg2chat we used mini w...

This year I've taken on the #teach180 challenge.  The challenge is to post one tweet per day showing a glimpse inside your classroom.  I'm also putting the tweets together in a biweekly blog so that I can share the resources that I'm tweeting about. Day 151:  Today we had another one of our weekly cumulative quizzes. Weekly quiz day #teach180 pic.twitter.com/viDHPLYafg — Jennifer Abel (@abel_jennifer) April 26, 2017 Day 152:  Today in geometry we practiced finding the measure of inscribed angles (and angles formed by a tangent and a chord) as well as their intercepted arcs.  We did this with a game of BOOM!   Here are the cards if you'd like to use them.  I got the idea from this TpT page.  The BOOM cards come from Rachel Lynette . Today in #geomchat we practiced using inscribed angles & intercepted arcs with a game of BOOM. Thanks @RachelLynette for the idea #teach180 pic.twitter.com/XhSY92jbvA — Jennifer Abel (@abel_jennif...

This year I've taken on the #teach180 challenge.  The challenge is to post one tweet per day showing a glimpse inside your classroom.  I'm also putting the tweets together in a biweekly blog so that I can share the resources that I'm tweeting about. Day 141: Today we had our first weekly quiz of the fourth marking period. Weekly quizzes today #teach180 pic.twitter.com/XSVs7YNd1d — Jennifer Abel (@abel_jennifer) April 10, 2017 Day 142:  Today in geometry, we practiced finding the volume of pyramids and cones using this ExploreLearning Gizmo. Today in #geomchat we practiced finding the volume of pyramids and cones using @ExploreLearning 's Gizmo. I love the visual here #teach180 pic.twitter.com/oHHpWrogZB — Jennifer Abel (@abel_jennifer) April 11, 2017 Day 143:  Today in algebra 2 we practiced evaluating logarithms with this domino activity .  Students have to rewrite the log in exponential form and sometimes they have to condense an expressi...

I can't say for sure where I first stumbled across Dance Dance Transversal.  It was most certainly on twitter while catching up on #MTBoS posts.  I found many people who had implemented the lesson, but the one that was done the best was this one by JJ Martinez and Jenn Vadnais. Last year, I used their Billie Jean and Uptown Funk videos.  My supervisor just happened to be doing a walk through as I was transitioning from one activity to the next.  When he walked in the room, the kids were cleaning up their markers and other supplies from a project that they were working on (they were creating alphabet scrap books for "The ABCs of Geometry") while I was bringing up the needed videos.  He inquired about what we were about to do for the second half of the period.  I let him know that what I was about to do would either go horribly wrong or be fantastic.  Of course with this bit of information, he had to stay.  I wrote about the implementation on tha...

This past weekend was my second year attending EdCamp Lancaster and my fourth EdCamp overall.  If you have never heard about EdCamps, you should start looking for one in your area.  Here is a quick video on EdCamps if you are unfamiliar. I always try to sell the idea to my department when one rolls around. I tell them that breakfast and sometimes even lunch is included, there are great door prizes, you can earn ACT48 credits (Pennsylvania's continuing education requirement for teachers), and of course that it always ends up being some of my best PD  every year. This year I attended the following sessions and picked up a few morsels to bring back to my classroom: Math Tech Tools - I shared Desmos's awesome activity builder and new geometry tool .  Most people knew about the graphing calculator, but not the other two.  I really advocated for the digital card sorts since that is my favorite feature. The math tech tool that I learned about is  Ma...

Last summer I got the crazy idea in my head that I should incorporate robotics into my high school math classroom.  I did a ton of research and narrowed down my first choice of robot to  +OZOBOT .  Then, by just being very very lucky, I learned that  +Tryazon  was doing a party/giveaway opportunity.  I won one Ozobot bit for myself and one to given away to a party guest.  I wrote about that initial experience here . After this experience, I decided to apply for a grant through our local education foundation .  Again, I was lucky enough to be chosen.  MTEF bought a class set of Ozobots for my classroom.  Here is what I've done with the Ozobots so far. I knew that I wanted the end product to be a path that the Ozobots would follow.  This year I'm teaching geometry and algebra 2, so I decided to do this assignment with transformations in geometry and as a cumulative review of graphing lots of types of functions for algebra 2. ...

I've been trying to be creative about turning card games and board games into alternatives to worksheets for building fluency.  I saw some elementary level numeracy games using uno.  So I decided to create a secondary uno game, well two actually.  I made one game on identifying the type of conic section from an equation and a second game for identifying the types of angles formed by two parallel lines and a transversal.  Uno could also be used to practice other skills related to identifying situations in math.  Maybe another option would be for identifying whether a set of lines where parallel, perpendicular, or neither. Here is how I modified the game to for conic sections: And here is my angle pair game: This activity is pretty time consuming.  I did not have kids play by the official rules of reaching 500 points, rather I just gave them a time limit and the person with the lowest score at the end of the time frame was declared to be the wi...