I am currently in between classes. 20 minute classes, ending at noon. Crazy!
Here’s what I did/will be doing:
Intro to Computer Science
As a gateway to binary, had the girls try to list out all 32 ways they could arrange their fingers (with each finger being up or down). girls found a couple of good ways to get there (list all 0-fingers, all 1-fingers, all 2-fingers, note symmetry, and one girl basically found binary). Tomorrow, we finish that before we install programs and make accounts and so forth. It was fun!
Geometry
WODB with groups! Put girls into groups of 3 or 4. Had each group do a Which One Doesn’t Belong activity, using shape sets from Christopher Danielson’s book. Then they flipped over to the back of the worksheet and used the same rules to figure out why each one of them “doesn’t belong.” I may need to work on the wording, since saying “you don’t belong!” can seem mean, but the process was fun: each group had to find something that was unique about them that the other two had in common. I may modify the rules a bit in my next class to make it harder (too many “yes/no” reasonings made it too easy and reduced depth of discussion). Groups that finished first had to find a second reason.
Click the images below for larger versions of a student’s work. Check the bottom of the post for a blank copy of the worksheet
AP Statistics
Personality Coordinates! Thanks Dan Meyer. I had a lot of groups of three, so those groups got two different graphs – one that was the same square Dan uses in that post and one that was a steadily increasing line (pictured) and had to do both. I think this was fun and I definitely learned something watching the students do it.
