Inspired by the general enthusiasm for the process in the MtBOS, I tried my first 3 Act Math Lesson(s) today. If this is somehow the first place you’ve heard that term, Dan Meyer has been the main force and originator of this structure, and I’ve also seen good explanations of the structure from Dane Ehler,Read More
The Great Geometry Soccer Goal project ended a couple of weeks ago just before spring break, and I’m finally ready to finally debrief. I already wrote many of my thoughts at the mid-point of the project, so this one will be brief. If you’re interested in seeing the products, here are the videos they made. TheyRead More
Today in AP Statistics we continued the Great Candy Review by comparing Starburst proportions to the skittles proportions; specifically, we started trying to decide if the proportion of orange starbursts could be equal to the proportion of orange skittles. The activity covers both 1-sample proportion tests (by assuming that 20% of skittles are orange, as weRead More
Spring break officially ends in a little under 12 hours, when my first class starts tomorrow. Naturally, tomorrow is the day in our rotating schedule where I don’t have a single free period, so it will be quite a change of pace. Having just finished up our giant soccer goal geometry project, I’ve given myselfRead More
Our geometry soccer goal project was scheduled for five 80-minute class days, but we lost a class day in every class due to snow. They were required to do some work on their projects at home during those days (we do “remote school” on snow days), but certainly not as much productive work was done.Read More
I am teaching AP Statistics this year, and, in general, really like it. I have a science background as much as a math background, so statistics is very appealing to me, and I honestly do believe that it is more important and useful than calculus for many, many people. Plus, I think it’s fun! MyRead More
By now, you have seen the dress. This dress, by the way, is undeniably, and actually, Blue and Black. If you’re like me, you see White and Gold (in shadow!) If you’re like many others, you see Blue and Black. If you’re like some, you see Periwinkle and Gold. But the real dress has beenRead More
Inspired by this post from Geoff Kraal, I am going to spend the next five class days (80 minutes each) plus homework time working on a large-scale project in which my three geometry classes will build small, child-size soccer goals out of PVC pipe. When we’re finished, the goals will be given to faculty childrenRead More
…and I really don’t know how. The problems are great, but I’m not comfortable (yet, I hope) grading them as high-value summative assessments, which means that I don’t have a “reasonable” distribution of grades. I could spend a day consolidating our knowledge from the problems and short-lectures – areas of various shapes, similarity theorems, scalingRead More
I’ll admit, I thought tonight’s homework problem wouldn’t be so hard after tackling the Tennis Court problem and Geoff Kraal’s Pizza Casbah Challenge problem. But I’m getting a lot of stressed e-mails from confused students (who have not learned to embrace confusion I guess), so we’ll see how it goes. Here it is. Still stressingRead More
